Slade Primary School
Birmingham, UK

In their own words

Our Maths — No Problem! journey

We began using the MNP whole-class approach in September 2016 and have since embedded the methodology in Years 1 to 6. All children within these year groups were given a working maths journal, as well as the award-winning workbooks and textbooks that comprise the MNP Primary Maths Series.

The textbooks and workbooks have now become part of the daily practice for all pupils from Year 1 to Year 6. As a result, MNP is well established in the classrooms of all year groups. And the children really enjoy the material. A pupil in Year 3 quotes:

“I like Maths — No Problem! It helps me with my methods and I can express maths in a way that is good for me.”

Since transitioning to the MNP approach, we have dedicated a significant amount of staff CPD to this area, including the development of journaling, subject knowledge enhancement using the Maths Hub, and attending MNP’s three-day maths mastery course with Dr Yeap Ban Har. Additionally, we have budgeted for an additional teacher to attend the same three-day course next year.

In 2018 we began to develop our use of sentence stems and have embedded models and images into EYFS alongside number blocks. This is something we feel has worked well and has had a huge impact on the staff and children across school.

A pupil from Slade Primary School said:

“Maths — No Problem! challenges us with journal challenges and writing reasoning sentences about our maths work.”

Working with and alongside Clare Williams and Helen Hackett since 2016 has enabled us to embed these further and share good practise with all practitioners across the school. This has been beneficial for us and opened up many opportunities.

Maths — No Problem! in our school

As a school, we use all online resources to support planning and assessment. Additionally, we have taken all new staff through the model videos on the MNP website, which has been an excellent resource for us. Staff have commented that as a result of these efforts, children have progressed quickly in maths and are more able to reason and explain their thinking in detail — this was further confirmed by OFSTED.

Our leadership team’s original vision to implement the MNP approach across the school has come to fruition and is constantly developing. We’ve recently invested in the MNP Mathsteasers booklets which are being implemented across KS2, providing high-quality challenges for the most able learners.

In order to keep up with the latest developments and to allow for consistent refining of mathematics at Slade Primary, our headteacher, Helen Hastilow, chairs the strategic board for the Central Maths Hub. We are working closely with practitioners in other Maths Hubs to develop their practise. In addition, two of our practitioners have, on their own time, completed the Maths Hub Subject Knowledge course, enabling them to support others successfully.

In January of 2018 we hosted the Shanghai Exchange programme. Our Maths leader spent two weeks in Shanghai and we hosted two Shanghai teachers who taught in Year 2 and Year 5. All staff at Slade Primary attended these lessons and were involved in the pre- and post-discussions. It was a great opportunity for staff and children alike. And our maths lead was able to bring back expertise and knowledge which she was able to share with all staff.

We are currently supporting a school in Tamworth through their own mastery maths journey and over the past 3 years, we have welcomed 12 schools and their senior leaders into our doors to see mastery in action first-hand.

We believe that every child should have access to high-quality maths teaching and we strongly believe that Maths — No Problem! is an excellent resource to support schools in achieving this.

MNP has had a significant impact on our school’s mathematical oracy which we now happily call ‘maths chatter’.