Maths

Maths 

RATIONALE

At Cloughwood Academy, our mathematics curriculum is designed for pupils in a specialist provision who often arrive with significant gaps in their knowledge, low confidence and previous negative experiences of maths. Many have become disengaged from the subject in earlier settings.

While we use White Rose Maths as our key guidance for sequencing and progression, we do not follow a mainstream scheme rigidly. Instead, we adapt and personalise it to create a curriculum that reflects the specialist context of Cloughwood Academy. This ensures pacing, content and resources are tailored to the wide range of needs across the school.

Our rationale includes:

• Building strong mathematical foundations, especially in numbers, tables and key fluency skills.
• Creating positive, confidence-building experiences for pupils who have historically struggled with maths.
• Using concrete and visual representations to support understanding.
• Developing a long-term bespoke Cloughwood Maths Curriculum, using White Rose as the spine but evolving towards a fully integrated thematic and cross-curricular model in future years.

INTENT

We aim to provide a maths curriculum that is:

• Guided by White Rose Maths, ensuring clear progression and coverage of essential concepts while adapting content to meet pupils’ starting points.
• Inclusive and personalised, with classes following different approaches depending on their needs, abilities and readiness.
• Focused on essential numeracy, placing a strong emphasis on secure times table knowledge, place value, number operations and practical fluency needed for real life.
• Designed to gradually embed whole-school themes, with the understanding that this is a long-term development priority. The goal is to ultimately create a fully bespoke, theme-linked curriculum for Cloughwood Academy.
• Supportive of future qualifications, enabling pupils to access Functional Skills from Year 9 and, when appropriate, GCSE Mathematics in Years 10, 11 and beyond.
• Enriched through mathematical competitions and activities that promote problem-solving, confidence and enthusiasm for maths.

IMPLEMENTATION

Curriculum Structure

• Use White Rose Maths long-term plans as a guiding framework, ensuring structured progression while allowing flexibility for specialist provision needs.
• Adapt White Rose resources with concrete manipulatives, visual models, scaffolded tasks and bespoke materials.
• Provide four maths lessons per week, focusing on fluency, reasoning, problem-solving and functional application.

Teaching Approaches

• Ensure pupils safely and confidently use concrete resources, such as place value counters, fraction tiles and measuring equipment.
• Embed consistent timestables practice throughout the week to strengthen long-term recall.
• Use small-step teaching, modelling, guided practice and high scaffolding to rebuild confidence and reduce cognitive overload.
• Respond to each class’s profile with individualised planning, varied pacing and differentiated learning pathways.

Thematic Curriculum – Long-Term Development

• We are working towards integrating the school’s half-termly themes (e.g. World Cup, Spy School, Gaming World) into maths lessons.
• This transition will be slow and deliberate, ensuring pupils have secure core skills before themed elements become embedded.
• Our long-term vision is to develop a fully bespoke Cloughwood Academy Maths Curriculum that blends White Rose progression with rich thematic contexts.

Qualifications Pathway

• From Year 9, pupils have the opportunity to work towards Functional Skills Mathematics (Entry Level to Level 2).
• In Years 10 and 11, pupils can attempt GCSE Mathematics when appropriate, supported by tailored teaching and revision pathways based on White Rose KS4 guidance.

Enrichment and Competitions

Each term, pupils can participate in a range of mathematical enrichment activities designed to build enthusiasm, resilience and strategic thinking, including:

• Chess tournaments
• Escape room challenges delivered by external organisations
• Weekly multiplication competitions
• Additional problem-solving events and in-house challenges

These activities promote teamwork, persistence and mathematical reasoning in engaging contexts.

IMPACT

We measure the success of our curriculum through:

• Improved engagement and confidence, with pupils demonstrating a more positive attitude toward maths.
• Strengthened foundational skills, especially times tables, number fluency and functional numeracy.
• Greater independence and understanding, supported by the effective use of concrete and visual methods.
• Successful attainment of qualifications, including Functional Skills from Year 9 onwards and increased readiness for GCSE Mathematics.
• Improved retention, supported by White Rose–aligned sequencing and regular revisiting of key concepts.
• High participation in enrichment activities, showing increased enjoyment and motivation in maths.