It all adds up

Taught across the curriculum, maths is greater than the sum of its parts, but this doesn’t mean bolting maths onto other subjects for the sake of it, says Wendy Jones...

It all sounds wonderfully uplifting. Dip into England’s National Curriculum programmes of study for key stages 1 and 2 and you’ll see maths described as “a creative and highly inter-connected discipline” and “essential to everyday life, critical to science” and so forth. A high-quality maths education is said to provide “a foundation for understanding the world” and, we’re told, pupils should apply their mathematical knowledge to subjects across the curriculum.

Quite right too. The aims of the maths curriculum are spot-on, stressing fluency in the fundamentals, mathematical reasoning and problem-solving. But how exactly do schools apply those lofty learning ideals across the curriculum and how well are they coping with this new demand? What is maths across the curriculum (or numeracy across learning, as it is often described) and what does it look like when it’s done well?

The national curriculum – notoriously in the view of some¬ – is very clear about what children should be taught, but very quiet on how they should be taught it. The government has made a virtue of its wish to give teachers free rein on the ‘how’. But not everyone sees it like that. And maths across the curriculum is a particular case in point. 

From what I hear, many schools are ‘thrashing around’ (as it was put to me by one maths adviser), trying to work out how to inject some maths into the rest of the curriculum in such a way as will pass muster with Ofsted. So if you’re finding it difficult, you’re not alone.

The theory behind cross-curricular numeracy is fairly obvious. Children need to develop mathematical sense and skills just as they need to develop language and literacy ability. That development should not stop when the maths lesson ends, any more than literacy ends with an English lesson.

At National Numeracy we say every teacher should be a teacher of numeracy (one of the recommendations in our Manifesto for a Numerate UK). Just as all teachers look for opportunities to encourage language and literacy skills, whatever the actual lesson, so too should teachers look for the numeracy potential in everything they teach.

In large part this is a matter of confidence and attitude. If teachers are not comfortable teaching maths, or if they see it as a ‘can/can’t do’ or tick-box subject, they are going to be less open to the creative possibilities of numeracy outside the maths lesson.

Instead, as Lynn Churchman, National Numeracy’s education director and a former head of maths at Ofsted, sees it, teachers need to recognise ‘being numerate’ as the core of mathematical ability. Children should not simply learn the processes and mechanics of maths, but understand and inter-relate the concepts – in other words, think mathematically so that they bring their maths to bear on any problem in any context.

In practice, that does not mean bolting on a bit of maths to another subject for the sake of it – getting the children, for example, to put historical dates in chronological order. That might be better than nothing – just. But if it feels boring and pointless to the children, it probably is, and could well be counter-productive. It doesn’t do children’s appreciation of maths any favours.

What it should mean is solving real problems – where, for example, understanding the maths is crucial to understanding the history. This might include making sense of simplified census data to understand how people lived or exploring the use of the abacus. 

Or – and this is the sort of approach favoured by Lynn in her work with schools – it could involve a cross-curricular topic where mathematical thinking sits alongside other forms of thinking (as it does in real life) – planning a school trip or a harvest festival, buying and wrapping Christmas presents, with all those ‘how much? how long? how many?’ problems to solve.

There are more ideas and examples via the National Numeracy, NCETM and Nrich websites. You might also like to look at some of the CBBC and BBC Bitesize material produced as part of the BBC’s Maths of the Day campaign. Even if you’re not a footie fan, you can pick up ideas here for taking maths outside maths lessons.

Of course successfully integrating maths across the curriculum requires careful planning and leadership, and clarity about the aims (is mathematical reasoning being reinforced or new skills being developed?) and may need external support. It also demands belief from every teacher that they can do it – that both they and their pupils can ‘be numerate’ across all aspects of learning.

About the author

Wendy Jones is a freelance journalist, a former BBC education correspondent and a trustee of National Numeracy nationalnumeracy.org.uk