Children's maths skills receive a boost
Charlotte Goddard
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Initiative enhances the knowledge, skills and confidence of nursery practitioners, and ultimately improves children's maths progress.
PROJECT
Maths Champions
PURPOSE
To improve the maths skills of children in early years settings
FUNDING
The Department for Education provided funding to establish the pilot. Ongoing running costs are now covered by nurseries paying to take part. The fees are £400 for National Day Nursery Association (NDNA) members and £500 for non-members
BACKGROUND
The NDNA identified maths as one of the weaker areas of the early years curriculum, with 21 per cent of children failing to achieve early learning goals in numeracy and 18 per cent not meeting goals in shape, space and measures. The organisation developed the Maths Champions programme with the aim of improving the knowledge, skills and confidence of nursery practitioners, and ultimately boosting children's maths skills.
ACTION
Maths Champions is a one-year programme, with each setting nominating a graduate practitioner to be a "maths champion". "First and foremost, it is about helping to tackle practitioners' own fears about maths and increasing their confidence," says Stella Ziolkowski, NDNA's director of quality and training. "This is done though the support of the maths champion lead in the nursery and through the training and resources provided by NDNA. Once they understand maths is all around them in their everyday environment and is not something that needs to be done in isolation, their whole approach to supporting children's maths development changes."
The NDNA provides every maths champion with two online courses, each lasting two hours, which cover auditing the teaching of early years maths in their setting and leading the programme.
The maths champions then assess the confidence of staff in their setting when it comes to teaching maths using a questionnaire. They also evaluate the current mathematical competence of both staff and children using tools provided online. This identifies areas for the maths champion to focus on, feeding into an action plan for supporting their colleagues to improve maths teaching.
They implement this plan with support from a bank of online resources which provide ideas for maths activities that can be built into a nursery's daily routine such as measuring coloured water and playing noughts and crosses using painted stones. Short monthly webinars explain how the resources can be incorporated.
Three further online courses are completed during the year by the maths champion, who is expected to disseminate what they have learned to colleagues. The maths champions also have access to the Basic Key Skills Builder maths skills assessment tool which aims to help the team in each setting improve their own personal maths skills with one-to-one support.
The NDNA provides individual support to maths champions throughout the programme. "Many practitioners prefer to do this via email. However, where an individual has a specific question they would like to talk though, there is a dedicated team on hand to provide this support," says Ziolkowski. At the close of the programme, the maths champion conducts another audit to measure progress.
OUTCOME
Some 341 settings have taken part in the programme so far. The Education Endowment Foundation commissioned the University of York and Durham University to conduct an independent evaluation of the Maths Champions programme during 2016/17.
Children who participated in the programme made on average the equivalent of two additional months' progress in maths compared with children in a comparison group. However, the strength of these findings was weakened by the fact not all those involved were tested when the intervention ended.
Maths champions spent on average over three hours per week on the programme, with half of them doing this work in their own time. The workload was lower for other early years practitioners involved, and 22 per cent reported completing their professional development work outside work hours.
The NDNA's own internal evaluation found 95 per cent of maths champions saw improvements in children's maths development and 100 per cent found staff were more confident when it came to maths.
"We have received excellent case studies and testimonies from Maths Champions settings, in particular where Ofsted inspectors have recognised the positive impact the programme has on children's development," says Ziolkowski.