Trust Curriculum Intent

Our mission is to provide a cradle to career education that allows our children to enjoy lives of choice and opportunity. By the age of 18, we want every child to have the option of university or a high quality alternative. 

Subject Curriculum Intent

“Mathematics knows no races of geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country” (David Hilbert, German Mathematician).

Maths is a subject comprising interconnecting areas between which pupils will move fluently in order to understand different representations of mathematical ideas. Rather than our learners viewing maths as separate discrete topics, Brigshaw students view the subject as a web of topics between which there are a multitude of connections. As problem solving is of such importance in mathematics, our students are able to use their knowledge of this ‘web of topics’ in order to decide the most efficient method to approach a problem and, thus, arrive at an accurate solution in the most methodical and systematic way.

As a department, we ensure that all of our students are fully numerate by interleaving the key mathematical skills into every single lesson. We make the subject relevant to all students by relating maths to real-life examples wherever possible. We strongly believe that it is our responsibility to educate our students for their life after Brigshaw and therefore, we teach a range of topics which will equip them with necessary skills for their adult life. In Year 8, our students develop their financial capabilities by learning about mortgages and interest rates. Similarly, we teach our students to take a critical approach to data and interpret published statistics from the government or the news and make informed decisions as to its reliability. In Year 7, students will explore how maths underpins the basics of computer science and they will explore the ever-increasing importance of computer algorithms. 

We equip students with the skills to break down sophisticated problems into a series of simpler steps and instil the drive to persevere to find solutions. We value the importance of oracy skills in maths and we insist on the use of mathematical vocabulary from our students when explaining, proving or justifying their working out. We challenge the stigma that ‘maths is too hard’ or ‘maths is boring’ by fostering a passion for the subject in our students, allowing them to share in our excitement of finding an elegant solution to a geometry problem or solving a complex equation! Our high expectations and challenging programme of study ensure that students leave Brigshaw as fluent mathematicians with a thirst for knowledge. 

Curriculum Principles

• Reverse Planning in Maths means that the skills required by students at GCSE and A level is  positioned as the end goal so that lessons right from the very beginning of Year 7 build towards it. Students first meet key skills in KS3 that are then interleaved through topics right through to A level Maths and Further Maths.

• Powerful Knowledge is developed in the maths curriculum by highlighting the key concepts that feed through all units of work and encouraging students to apply skills used in Pythagoras, Trigonometry, Vectors and many more to enable them to utilise maths in the real world.  Strong themes of algebra run throughout our curriculum which enable students to access calculus at A level which underpins the fundamentals of engineering. 

• Cultural Capital is developed in the maths curriculum by exploring topics beyond the breadth of the national curriculum. For example, our Year 9 students have the opportunity to study an enrichment unit and learn more about interest rates and mortgages as well as loans and personal finance which we believe will equip them with skills for later in life. Within the curriculum, we also develop the students’ number skills, focussing on percentages, decimals, multipliers and directed numbers to ensure they have the mathematical literacy to succeed in everyday adult life. 

• Substantive (“Know That”) knowledge such as knowing their multiplication facts and algebraic manipulation allow our students to be able to successfully tackle more challenging ideas and concepts. Deliberate repeated practice helps children to build confidence, fluency and efficiency in order to secure this substantive knowledge into their long-term memories. Our interleaving scheme of work allows students  to make links across different mathematical components to build this substantive knowledge in their long term memory This has been mapped carefully through our curriculum to ensure knowledge strands from Year 7 feed into lessons up into A Level lessons and the complexity of the content which students engage with increases cumulatively. 

• Procedural and Disciplinary (“Know How”) Knowledge is developed in the maths curriculum by developing our students to reason mathematically, problem solve and use efficient methods of working out. Students are encouraged from Year 7 to tackle problems by looking for key information and using their substantive knowledge in order to solve problems effectively. We encourage our students to apply Mathematics to real life contexts, think computationally, and pose the right questions to develop their disciplinary knowledge in Mathematics. 

• Cognitive Psychology is developed in the maths curriculum by planning lessons which interleave prior learning and use the information gathered to integrate new knowledge more successfully. The curriculum as a whole is spiralled in nature which means content is continuously reviewed and built upon. There are many opportunities for topic crossover meaning students are continuously drawing upon prior learning. 

What will this look like at implementation?

Please use the links below to explore how our curriculum looks, for each year group, as a result of these guiding principles

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How can you support students’ learning from home?

All students from Year 7 to Year 10 complete weekly homework on SPARX maths. Parents/Carers will receive weekly emails on updating them on their child’s progress. Please ensure you are encouraging your child to complete this homework.

Year 11 students are set a full 90 minute past paper to complete every other week. Please ensure they have a quiet space to complete this assessment and encourage them to use their exercise books, revision guides and SPARX maths to help them when necessary.

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