Here at The Milford Academy, it is out intent to deliver an ambitious and challenging curriculum within a quality and enriching environment. It is our intent that our teaching of mathematics enables each child to develop their learning, achieve their full potential and thus be equipped with the mathematical skills and understanding required for later life. We want Milford pupils to acquire confidence and enthusiasm in maths itself so that they believe in their capabilities, are willing to challenge themselves and can express their mathematical thinking. We want to break down the barriers of maths and provide pupils with methodical strategies so that they view mathematics as smaller, manageable problems rather than one overwhelming task.

It is our aim to provide our pupils with prescriptive, structured lessons which provide opportunities to develop their skill set. Number sense and fact fluency is fundamental and for this reason it is intertwined into each session to ensure that pupils are provided with the opportunities to make connections with their maths and revisit key skills on a regular basis. This allows us to develop the retrieval and recall skills of our pupils so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.

We value and encourage, across all classes, talk opportunities and a concrete, pictorial, abstract path to learning which empower pupils to build the resilience and skills required to be real life problem solvers and to be fluent in both number and communication skills. We want our pupils to use jottings in their maths work, be able to reason and explain by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language. Teaching staff support this vision by using a range of questioning styles to develop higher order thinking and the metacognition of our pupils.

Our skills-based approach enables us to provide targeted support and interventions where necessary. We aim to apply our mathematics into our everyday lives, providing cross-curricular links where possible. Staff seek out opportunities for our pupils to participate in engaging and challenging maths events across the city and nationwide, for them to apply their learning whilst developing their experience of real-life contexts.

Our challenge going forward, is to increase the number of pupils achieving national standards before they enter Secondary School and improve standards at a lower age, in line with the raised expectations in the new National Curriculum.