At Rawmarsh Community School, we  aim to empower all pupils with the numeracy skills required for them to become confident learners and lead fulfilled lives as citizens of their local and the wider community.

Numeracy is a skill that involves confidence and competence with numbers and measures. It requires an understanding of the number system, and an ability to solve number problems in a variety of contexts. Numeracy also demands practical understanding of the ways in which information is gathered by counting and measuring, and is presented in

• Graphs
• Diagrams
• Charts
• Tables

Mathematical skills can be consolidated and enhanced when pupils have opportunities to apply and develop them across the curriculum. Poor numeracy skills, in particular, hold back pupils’ progress and can lower their self-esteem. 

To improve these skills, some students have a timetabled numeracy lesson to help develop confidence, recall and fluency skills.  Students are placed in smaller groups and work through a scheme designed to develop the basic numeracy skills and knowledge required to enhance mathematical progress.  The scheme of work builds upon and re-visits previously taught content to develop a greater understanding.  Once these basic numeracy skills are embedded, problem solving and application of the skills are developed.  Embedded within these will be key mathematical literacy terms to re-enforce what is being taught in mathematics lessons.

The skills and knowledge developed through numeracy lessons feeds into the KS3 mathematics curriculum to enable all students to access the full National Curriculum.