Primary Calculation Guidance

One of the first projects undertaken by the Maths Hubs programme, launched in summer 2014, was the England-China school exchange, involving primary teachers in the school year 2014-15, and secondary teachers in the current school year, 2015-16. In both these exchanges, English teachers visit Shanghai for a fortnight and are immersed in a number of schools there, and then their exchange partner teachers from those schools come to England for a month and teach maths in the English teachers’ schools alongside their partners.

On 23 and 24 June 2015, the 71 teachers from the 47 lead primary schools (the LPS) who participated in the first year of the exchange gathered at the National College for Teaching and Leadership; together, they had hosted 55 Shanghai exchange teachers in their schools. They brought to Nottingham and shared with each other what they had learned from the exchange so far, and they also set out their plans for embedding and extending their knowledge in the coming academic year, in their own and also in their local partner schools.

One session of the conference focused in detail on “calculation guidance”; the purpose was to produce a list of recommendations and effective practice teaching ideas developed during and after the exchange visits. This document summarises and synthesises the discussions that took place and the reflections that were shared by the LPS teachers, and also draws on the two written reports submitted by each LPS during 2014-15. This is not intended to be a calculation policy as such; rather, it could sit alongside a school’s existing policy, and the ideas captured here (which are indicative and not exhaustive) could inform and enhance teaching across all primary key stages.