Ofsted Inspections: Quality of Education with PlanBee Maths

Whether we like it or not, Ofsted reports are still the main indicator of a school's standards. In September 2019, the new Ofsted Education Inspection Framework came into force, with new criteria against which quality of education is evaluated.

The PlanBee Maths Curriculum helps schools ensure quality of education, as set out in the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework. To help schools and teachers prepare for their next inspection, we've written this article – which lays out precisely how it helps meet the criteria of Ofsted's three 'i's: intent, implementation and impact.

If you use the PlanBee Maths Curriculum in your school, this guide is for you. It is designed to help prepare for a ‘deep dive’ of your Maths curriculum during an Ofsted inspection if you use PlanBee’s Primary Maths Curriculum. It addresses questions of intent, implementation and impact, as outlined in the Ofsted Inspection Framework. You can download an editable version of this guide, with supporting documents, via the link below.

Ensuring Quality of Education with the PlanBee Maths Curriculum

Intent:

Talk me through your curriculum at KS1

• Our KS1 Maths curriculum has been split into three terms. Each term has twelve weeks of planned Maths teaching, covering programmes of study. This leaves one week in each term either for assessment, consolidation or just to allow for usual school timetabling issues, such as planning an end of year production. See Appendix 1.
• Across the three terms, all KS1 Maths objectives are covered, as can be seen in Appendix 2.
• Different programmes of study, such as properties of shapes or addition and subtraction, are visited at various points during the year to refresh children’s knowledge and ensure that children are consistently building upon their skills and making links between different areas of mathematics.
• We have a ready-planned scheme of work for each of the 36 weeks in each year group to ensure that teaching across the key stage is consistent. Each scheme of work encourages children’s fluency but also gives opportunities for reasoning and solving problems.

Talk me through your curriculum at KS2

• Our KS2 Maths curriculum has been split into three terms. Each term has ten weeks of planned Maths teaching, covering various strands. This leaves three weeks in each term either for assessment, consolidation, addressing misconceptions or just to allow for usual school timetabling issues, such as planning an end of year production. See Appendix 3.
• Across the three terms, all KS2 Maths objectives are covered, as can be seen in Appendix 4.
• Different programmes of study, such as properties of shapes or addition and subtraction, are visited at various points during the year to refresh children’s knowledge and ensure that children are consistently building upon their skills and making links between different areas of mathematics.
• We have a ready-planned scheme of work for each of the 30 weeks in each year group to ensure that teaching across the key stage is consistent. Each scheme of work encourages children’s fluency but also gives opportunities for reasoning and problem-solving.

What is the intent behind this curriculum?

This Maths curriculum is intended to ensure that children have access to a high-quality Maths curriculum that builds knowledge and skills incrementally and allows them to use their knowledge in all areas of mathematics to solve real-life problems. Many of the weekly schemes are built around real-life contexts, such as ‘Multiplication Problems’ in Year 3 which is set in the context of a visit to an aquarium, ‘Solving Subtraction’ in Year 6 which is themed around World Peace Day, or ‘Can we find fractions of numbers?’ for Year 2 which puts fraction problems in the context of farming.

Is your curriculum knowledge-led or assessment-led?

• This is a knowledge-based curriculum. Children are taught carefully planned schemes of work that ensure they learn the knowledge and skills set out in the National Curriculum. There is time scheduled in, particularly in KS2, to ensure that children can revisit areas of weakness or address misconceptions. 
• Children are not expected to become wholly fluent in one area of the curriculum before moving on to another. The strategy for distributing the programmes of study in different sections throughout the year is so that children can use the knowledge gained in other areas of the curriculum to support any other areas they are struggling with. For example, children will more readily understand how to work with fractions if they have a solid grasp of multiplication and division. Switching frequently between different strands of mathematics allows children to gain a range of knowledge and skills in different areas that will feed into each other.

Implementation:

How did you go about planning the curriculum? Who plans the curriculum?

• The curriculum was planned by an external provider, PlanBee. It was planned from scratch by ex-primary teachers who spent several years ensuring meticulous National Curriculum coverage across all areas of the Maths curriculum. Each lesson is fully planned and prepared, ensuring full coverage.
• Having a ready-planned curriculum allows us the time to further adapt the lessons and schemes of work to best suit the needs of our children.

How do you differentiate your curriculum?

• Each Maths lesson within our curriculum is prepared with three-way differentiation to ensure that all learners can access the learning, build upon their existing knowledge and skills, and challenge their reasoning and problem-solving skills.
• Where the prepared differentiation doesn’t meet the needs of a particular learner, we adapt this by [school inserts description of further differentiation].

How does your curriculum support the achievement of the most able?

• Although all children are given opportunities to develop their reasoning and problem-solving skills, this is more evident in the provision for the higher-attaining learners who are frequently challenged to go beyond what is expected from the main learning focus. For example:
  • Year 1 Spring Term | Let’s Solve Missing Number Problems, Lesson 5: In this lesson, children are challenged to solve simple missing number problems. Higher-ability children are challenged not only to solve these calculations but to match two identical problems with the correct answer using cards, such as matching ‘6 + _ = 9’ with ‘_ + 6 = 9’ with the correct answer of ‘3’.
  • Year 5 Summer Term | Describing Data, Lesson 3: In this lesson, children look at line graph ‘stories’. Children must match a description of what the line graph is showing, to the correct line graph. Higher-attaining children are given the extra challenge of creating their own line graph and associated story, further testing their understanding and mastery over the teaching point.
• Higher-ability children are frequently challenged to go beyond the aims of the National Curriculum if they are ready to do so. For example:
  • Year 3 Spring Term | Solving Subtraction, Lesson 4: In this lesson, children are introduced to column subtraction including exchanging. The curriculum specifies children should subtract numbers with up to three decimal places, but this lesson challenges higher-ability children to extend this to four-digit numbers, drawing on their existing understanding to do so.
  • Year 5 Autumn Term | A Million Numbers, Lesson 1: Children explore the place value of numbers with up to six digits in this lesson, before ordering and comparing them. Higher-ability children are introduced to seven-digit numbers within their activity.

How do you differentiate your curriculum for SEN children?

• Having a fully planned and prepared curriculum for the majority of learners allows us more time to ensure that the specific needs of SEN children are met.
• We do this by [school inserts examples of specific provision].

How does each lesson fit within a sequence?

• Each lesson is part of a five-lesson scheme of work that has been carefully planned to ensure progression of skills, knowledge and understanding throughout the week.
• Each scheme of work is allocated to a programme of study within the curriculum, such as properties of shape, multiplication and division, or statistics. Each scheme within the strand has been planned to build on the previous schemes to ensure progression. See Appendix 5.

How do you ensure all staff are covering the curriculum?

Following PlanBee’s prepared Maths curriculum means that all teachers across KS1 and KS2 will cover the full curriculum, as shown in Appendix 2 and Appendix 4.

Impact:

How/where is knowledge progressed within your curriculum?

• The curriculum is planned so that children have ample opportunities to revisit different areas of knowledge and build on what they already know. Each strand is separated into different schemes that build on the previous ones to ensure knowledge progression. For example:
  • Children visit the properties of shapes programmes of study several times across each year group. See Appendix 6 to see how knowledge is progressed with regards to exploring 2D shapes from Year 1 to Year 6.
• See Appendix 2 and Appendix 4 to see how and where objectives are revisited across the year.
• See Appendix 5 to see the order in which the schemes for each programme of study are taught.

How/where are skills progressed within your curriculum?

• The curriculum is planned so that children have ample opportunities to revisit different skills throughout any given year. Each strand is separated into different schemes that build on the previous ones to ensure skills progression. For example:
  • The objective ‘read, write and interpret mathematical statements involving addition (+) and equals (=) signs’ is revisited in six different schemes of work across Year 1. See Appendix 7 for an overview of how these skills are progressed throughout the lessons.
  • The objective ‘tell and write the time from an analogue clock, including using Roman numerals from I to XII, and 12-hour and 24-hour clocks’ is revisited in three different schemes of work across Year 3. See Appendix 8 for an overview of how these skills are progressed.
  • The objective ‘multiply numbers up to 4 digits by a one- or two-digit number using a formal written method, including long multiplication for two-digit numbers’ for Year 5 is revisited three times across Year 5. See Appendix 9 for an overview of how these skills are revisited and progressed.
• The curriculum has also been planned to ensure skills progress throughout the year groups. For example:
  • See Appendix 6 to see how children’s skills with 2D shape are progressed from Year 1 to Year 6.

How do you measure the impact of your curriculum?

[Schools to delete/amend as appropriate]

• We measure the impact through careful monitoring of pupil progress according to our assessment strategy.
• The impact of our Maths curriculum is also measured in SATs results in Year 2 and Year 6.

What is your assessment strategy?

[Schools to delete/amend as appropriate]

• We assess throughout the year using PlanBee’s Maths test and assessment worksheets. These are a page of questions, problems and puzzles for every single Maths curriculum objective for KS2. See Appendix 10 for an example. We record the results from these using a Maths Assessment Record for each child so we can keep track of each child’s achievements and areas for development. See Appendix 11.
• We assess Maths by [school inserts assessment process].

What is the purpose of this assessment?

The purpose of this assessment is to track each child’s knowledge and understanding of the Maths curriculum objectives. This allows us to identify areas of strength and weakness to inform our teaching and for the weeks of consolidation that are accounted for within the Maths curriculum.

Appendices

THIS ARTICLE | (*.docx or *.pdf)

Appendix 1 | KS1 Maths scheme overview

Appendix 2 | KS2 Maths curriculum coverage

Appendix 3 | KS2 Maths scheme overview

Appendix 4 | KS2 Maths curriculum coverage

Appendix 5 | Programme of study progression overview

Appendix 6 | 2D shape knowledge and skills progression

Appendix 7 | Year 1 addition objective progression

Appendix 8 | Year 3 time objective progression

Appendix 9 | Year 5 multiplication objective progression

Appendix 10 | Year 5 number and place value assessment

Appendix 11 | Year 5 Maths Assessment Record

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