Maths

Our Vision

Our curriculum is designed to show progression within the 3 Key Stages. For Key Stage 3 there is a gradual progression between the National Curriculum criteria expectations for the end of Key Stage 2 to the expected outcomes for the end of Key Stage 3. For GCSE and A-level we follow the Edexcel schemes of work.

Our curriculum aims to empower students to develop and apply problem solving skills focusing predominantly on the powerful and overarching mathematical components: numerical and algebraic reasoning, proportional reasoning, geometrical reasoning and graphical representations.

Our aim is to encourage students to develop mathematical behaviour and as such our curriculum encourages students to develop deeper understanding to make links across curriculum areas in and outside the classroom and foster a mastery approach.
At all levels, students are provided with opportunities to apply mathematical skills.
The emphasis is on empowering students to notice, make connections, explain, justify, conjecture, prove.

We encourage students to deploy particular models to support their development (ratio tables, area model, graphing) as well as draw a pictorial representation to make sense of a given situation. Challenge is provided through depth.
Students are offered a wide variety of opportunities and experiences that widen their appreciation of mathematics and the world around it.

These will include:

  • Developing an appreciation of some aspects of finance and more creative mathematics
  • “Maths society community” leading to taking part in national competitions such as the UK Mathematics Individual Challenge and Team challenges, and Simon Singhs’ weekly Parallelograms.
  • Participation in National Maths and Numeracy days (Pi day/World maths days)
  • Code breaking with opportunities to visit Bletchley Park
  • Origami
  • Maths in different cultures
  • History of mathematics and famous mathematicians with opportunities to visit historical sights.
  • Opportunities to further explore mathematical ideas with key exponents in the mathematics community
  • Students will be encouraged to read extracts around mathematics (these will be on display outside the maths classrooms as well as set as homework tasks)
  • Weekly maths puzzle competitions.

For further information about our Maths curriculum, please contact Mrs R K Gill by emailing info@psa-bucks.com