Research School Network: Challenges of Early Years Mathematics

Solid foundations are vital for establishing future success. This philosophy applies to most contexts, but is especially true when focussing on mathematics, where what is done in those first, embryonic years holds the key to the future success of our students.

January’s guidance provided by EEF into improving Mathematics in Early Years and Key Stage 1 offered a superb opportunity for our school to critically reflect on our current practice and led us to make to some significant changes to both Early Years classrooms.

We decided to adopt recommendation two and increase our provision of mathematics. Whilst we have always provided daily opportunities for students to explore different aspects of the subject, there was not enough time on direct teaching. We now have daily sessions where children learn specific mathematical concepts led by teachers. Children are now much more secure in their maths understanding

The daily focus on direct maths teaching placed an increased demand on our Early Years teachers’ subject knowledge. We therefore followed another of the EEF recommendations, which was to provide more opportunities for subject-specific maths training. The increased amount of professional development around maths pedagogy helped raise the quality of our practitioner knowledge and confidence in the classroom.

Developing staff’s horizon knowledge to guarantee that children are learning Mathematics at relational level using representations and structures that can be built upon at a later date has sparked discussions (Recommendation 3 Use manipulatives and representation to develop understanding).

A big challenge for the Early Years curriculum is the transition into Key Stage 1. In maths the expectations for KS1 are so different from the Early Years framework. In an attempt to solve this problem, we decided to follow EEF Recommendation Three and introduce key representations and manipulatives into our Early Years curriculum. We wanted children’s conceptual knowledge to be more secure by the time they reached Key Stage 1.

A mastery approach to teaching Mathematics is becoming more prevalent in the primary sector as a way of meeting some of the challenges of ensuring knowledge understanding stick. Unfortunately, lots of the support for teachers tends to focus more on Key Stage 1 and 2 and less so on the Early Years. Even the latest, wonderfully useful, DfE and NCETM guidance focuses more on Key Stage 1 and 2.

Yet some of the principles and practices associate with mastery teaching do have a place in the EarlyCha Years classroom. Variation theory, for instance, has helped us teach students some of the important underlying mathematical concepts and relationships. Our teachers are using approaches likes substitution to build student understanding.

Another significant challenge for Early Years is the baseline assessment that determines whether children are ready to start learning basic counting, recognition and 1:1 correspondence. With limited resources available, meeting the EEF Guidance around using high quality targeted support to help all children learn mathematics can be difficult. Instead we have begun looking at front overloading our reception curriculum to provide the necessary provision for covering basic number skills and closing the gap.

By using some of the recommendations from the EEF Guidance Report and applying them to the context and circumstances of our school and our students, we have been able to build some solid foundations that should lead to success in the future.

Thomas Henesey
NCETM Primary Mastery Specialist
Kingsholm C of E Primary School