Information about the setting

Ysgol y Creuddyn is a Welsh-medium comprehensive school for pupils aged 11–18, and is maintained by Conwy local authority. There are 669 pupils on roll, including 89 in the sixth form. Approximately 17% of pupils are eligible to receive free school meals. 

Context and background to the effective or innovative practice

Over the course of a decade, the school’s mathematics department has published a range of free resources on their website. This provision is supported by a YouTube channel which explains the concepts behind the resources. These materials are based on the department’s interpretation of mastery, where pupils develop a deep, enduring, sound and flexible understanding of mathematics and numeracy. 

In the period leading up to the formal introduction of Curriculum for Wales, the mathematics department cooperated with the local primary cluster to develop a rage of resources for progression steps 2 and 3. These included resources on deeper research into place value, using manipulatives to work with negative numbers, and explaining the concepts of commutativity, associativity and distributivity. 

Description of nature of strategy or activity 

On arrival at the school in Year 7, all pupils complete a series of on-entry assessments which give a score out of 90. There is a strong correlation between the results of these assessments and final GCSE Mathematics grades, so the mathematics department uses the results to target specific groups in order to offer appropriate support and challenge. For example, pupils who score between 20 and 40 in the initial assessments receive one-to-one help from sixth-form mathematics students during morning registration periods. More extensive data on pupils starting at the school are also available, contained in an information sheet provided by feeder primary schools, and primary teachers have an opportunity to visit the school early on in Year 7 to discuss how their former pupils have settled at the school. 

The school also runs a series of numeracy support sessions for everyone in Years 7 to 10, using “Registration Games”, “Numeracy with the Romans”, “Mastering the Skills” and “Unknown” packs in weekly morning registration sessions. In Year 11, a target group receives sessions on calculation techniques, and after-school revision sessions provide opportunities to prepare for external exams.  

Outside formal lessons, there is an opportunity for all pupils at the school to take part in an annual darts tournament, with the final round taking place during the Eisteddfod at the end of the year. A weekly mathematics club offers a quiet refuge for playing board games such as Cluedo and Monopoly, or an opportunity to compete internationally in coding activities. This develops pupils’ mental numeracy skills and contributes to developing their confidence. 

The mathematics scheme of work has been carefully designed to build on previous subjects (without repeating them), it offers frequent opportunities for retrieval of previous work (to develop fluency), and include carefully varied exercises to develop conceptual understanding. The scheme of work and teaching resources are kept stable over time so that teachers in the department can examine the best ways to teach a specific subject, rather than ‘reinventing the wheel’ every year by developing new resources. 

Across the curriculum, the numeracy co-ordinator has worked with middle managers to map the provision against current numeracy frameworks in Years 7 to 9. Regular opportunities are provided to scrutinise books in order to evaluate the numeracy provision. A series of ‘extra tasks’ packs have been authored to offer opportunities to incorporate numeracy skills across the curriculum, including opportunities to incorporate the 5 new mathematical proficiencies. 

The school’s numeracy strategy includes opportunities to engage with pupils, parents and staff. A series of “numaracy for parents” workshops is held to promote the importance of a positive attitude towards numeracy and to explain how to access and use the school’s support resources, including a diagnostic questions website. The mathematics department also celebrates Pi Day each year (March 14th) with activities such as a pi-themed cake baking competition, an opportunity to draw a pi-scraper, and an opportunity to recite pi to as many decimal places as can be remembered. 

What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards? 

In many cases, the Year 7 cohort that receives additional support from sixth-form pupils demonstrate better progress in their national numeracy test scores than the rest of the Year 7 cohort. Regular questionnaires in Year 9 indicate that many pupils enjoy their mathematics lessons and that most pupils want to do well in mathematics. As a result of this purposeful planning, many pupils apply their numeracy skills independently to solve problems in various contexts across the curriculum.  

How have you shared your good practice? 

Leaders in this subject provide tailored training to school staff, primary school teachers and parents on the best ways of supporting pupils. This has enabled leaders to develop a positive attitude among staff towards raising everyone’s awareness of the importance of numeracy. The school is innovating by sharing its numeracy resources on its dedicated website, and these resources are used in other areas across Wales.