Numeracy at Carshalton Boys Sports College

A Whole-School Strategy

At Carshalton Boys Sports College, we believe numeracy is not the sole preserve of the Mathematics classroom — it is a set of transferable skills that pupils must apply with confidence in Science, Geography, Food Technology, Business and beyond. This belief underpins Building Stronger Foundations, our whole-school strategy for literacy, oracy and numeracy, in which every department at CBSC plays an active part.

This reflects both national priority and Ofsted expectation. The Ofsted Inspection Toolkit is explicit that pupils must secure important foundational knowledge in mathematics as part of Achievement, that this knowledge must be reinforced through consistent, well-sequenced teaching across the curriculum under Curriculum & Teaching, and that strategies for disadvantaged pupils, those with SEND and those with additional barriers to learning must be embedded rather than peripheral, under Inclusion. At CBSC, we have built a numeracy strategy that takes each of these expectations seriously, in every classroom, in every subject, from Year 7 to Sixth Form.

Building Stronger Foundations is our framework for embedding literacy, oracy and numeracy across the curriculum. Numeracy is not solely the responsibility of the Mathematics department: pupils encounter data, measurement, calculation, probability and statistical reasoning across a wide range of subjects, and every department has a responsibility to reinforce it consistently.

Under this framework, Numeracy runs as a continuous strand alongside Oracy, Disciplinary Reading, Disciplinary Writing and Catch-Up, with Numeracy and Catch-Up provision running concurrently across every phase of the strategy from May Half-Term 2025 onwards. The strategy is led by a designated Numeracy Lead and overseen by departmental BSF Champions, ensuring it is evidence-informed, systematically monitored, and reported to governors annually — in line with the Leadership & Governance expectations of the Ofsted Inspection Toolkit.

Our whole-school numeracy approach is built on a single principle: consistency across the curriculum reduces cognitive load and embeds mathematical fluency through repetition. When a pupil meets percentages calculated one way in Maths, a second way in Geography and a third in Food Technology, they are forced to learn three separate procedures rather than one secure method. By agreeing common methods and notation across every subject, we remove that unnecessary load and turn each lesson into a maths lesson without it needing to be named as such. This protects and extends a genuine strength, since numeracy is one of our relative strengths on entry, with pupils arriving at a KS2 maths scaled score of around 105. Our mission is that every teacher is part of how a student becomes confidently numerate.

What We Have Done So Far

We began with a subject-by-subject audit of where mathematical methods appear in each curriculum, mapped against the National Curriculum and the relevant exam specifications. This audit told us exactly which concepts are taught outside the Maths classroom and where the same idea is being modelled in different ways across the school. From the audit we produced a bespoke "Maths in [Subject]" A3 poster for every classroom. Each poster sets out worked examples drawn from that discipline, the Tier 3 vocabulary and oracy sentence starters that go with it, and, most importantly, the same agreed CBSC methods that appear on every other poster in the school. The calculation a pupil sees in one room is now the calculation they see in all of them.

Alongside the posters we ran a staff confidence survey, asking colleagues to rate their confidence by numeracy domain and to tell us what they would most like support with, so that our professional development was shaped around staff need rather than guessed at. We have since delivered subject-specific CPD built directly from those responses, grouping colleagues by confidence and by subject similarity, with each group led by a Maths specialist and kept small enough for genuine questions to be answered. This work is now overseen by our established numeracy leads, who continue to drive the strategy beyond launch and into sustained classroom habit.

The Best Practice We Are Embedding

The CPD and the posters point to one consistent standard of classroom practice. Across the school we ask colleagues to model mathematical answers under a visualiser, working through the method live, and to use the school-wide accepted method for each concept exactly as it is taught in Maths. Modelling under the visualiser makes the steps visible and slows the process down to the point where pupils can follow and copy secure reasoning, and using the shared method removes the contradictions between subjects that create cognitive load in the first place. To keep this practice alive between formal CPD cycles, numeracy features in our weekly staff briefings, where a short, repeated focus on one method or one piece of best practice keeps the standard front of mind for every member of staff.

Next Steps

Our next step is to publish the Staff Numeracy Handbook, a single reference point for every teacher that captures the agreed CBSC methods, the subject-specific guidance developed through CPD, and the modelling expectations now embedded in classroom practice. The handbook will consolidate everything the strategy has put in place so far into one document colleagues can return to at any time, and it will anchor our ongoing weekly briefing focus. We will then return to the baseline confidence measures gathered at launch to evaluate impact, with the numeracy leads and departmental BSF Champions continuing to provide a clear support route for any colleague who is unsure how to teach a mathematical concept in their subject.

Every department plans explicitly for the numeracy its subject demands, so that students experience numeracy not as something that happens only in Maths lessons, but as a living set of skills that is modelled, practised and expected in every classroom they sit in. In practice, this means:

• In Science, students read and plot graphs with correctly scaled and labelled axes, and use the shared CBSC method for calculating rates and percentage change.
• In History, students calculate timeframes and intervals between events, using consistent chronological notation across all humanities subjects.
• In Geography, students interpret data, scale and grid references, and calculate percentages and rates of change using the agreed CBSC method.
• In Food Technology and Business, students cost, budget and scale recipes and projects, applying the same percentage and ratio methods taught in Maths.

Each department has identified a Numeracy Champion, responsible for keeping their "Maths in [Subject]" poster current, feeding subject-specific numeracy moments back to the Numeracy Lead, and modelling consistent methods and notation in their own classroom displays.

We know that some students arrive at CBSC needing extra support to become confidently numerate, and we take this seriously at a whole-school level. All Year 7 pupils complete a number fluency baseline on entry — covering times tables, arithmetic and estimation — which is cross-referenced against KS2 SATs data, and pupils are re-screened at the start of Year 10 to identify anyone without secure Level 4-equivalent mathematical understanding.

Where a pupil is identified as not yet working at an age-expected level, we put a graduated programme of support in place — coordinated between our Mathematics department, our SEND team and pastoral staff — using concrete-pictorial-abstract approaches and personalised timetables that minimise time missed from the mainstream curriculum. This is a needs-led approach: the right level of support, for the right student, for as long as it’s needed. Progress is reviewed fortnightly against individual fluency targets, and RAG-rated progress is reported monthly to the Deputy Headteacher, HODs and form tutors.

We measure the success of this strategy through regular, structured monitoring rather than a single end-of-year check. Half-termly learning walks keep a specific focus on numeracy in lessons across the school, with anonymised departmental summaries shared with staff. Year group and department attainment data are shared with HODs each term, and the progress of numeracy catch-up pupils is reported to the Numeracy Lead and Deputy Headteacher every month. Headline figures are shared with the whole staff at briefings each half-term, keeping numeracy visible as a live priority rather than a launch-day initiative.

 

This data is reported by the Deputy Headteacher to the Senior Leadership Team each half-term, and to governors annually as part of the School Development Plan review — ensuring the strategy remains evidence-informed, systematically monitored, and accountable at every level of school leadership.

 

We measure the success of this whole-school strategy in several ways: through the consistency of method and notation we see in books and on classroom walls across every subject; through outcomes in assessments across all subjects at Key Stage 3, GCSE and A Level; and — just as importantly — through the confidence students show as mathematicians by the time they leave us.

Our aim is simple: every student at CBSC should build on the genuine strength they arrive with and leave us confidently numerate — not because one department taught them to, but because every subject they studied along the way expected it, modelled it, and helped them build it.