Primary Advantage Maths
The Primary Advantage Maths programme is designed to support schools leaders in building upon good practice in their schools to ensure maths teaching and learning is of the highest quality and all children make good progress.
The PA package was developed by a group of practising teachers from the PA federation and is rooted in current research based into best practice in mathematics teaching and learning. Its aims to develop children's conceptual understanding and skills proficiency are underpinned by a strong commitment to problem solving, reasoning and fluency.
Schools within the Primary Advantage Federation have a strong commitment to children’s maths. Daily maths lessons lay the foundations for this critical life skill as teachers follow the popular and effective PA Maths programme.
The PA Maths programme supports progression throughout the primary years and has a strong CPA thread running throughout. This means that children are exposed to conceptual ideas at a concrete level with a range of apparatus (e.g. counters, beads, Numicon and Dienes) before moving on pictorial representations. This may mean diagrams, sketches or using the Singapore bar model. Doing so develops children’s deep conceptual understanding and skills proficiency which supports the next move into abstract mathematics, such as long division.
Maths lessons are designed to be interactive with a significant emphasis on children’s talk. Through discussing their ideas, children construct new understanding, engage in a supportive community of practice, take responsibility for their learning and allow the teacher a window into their thinking which enables appropriate action to help them progress. Fluency, reasoning and problem solving are three themes of the maths National Curriculum (DfE, 2014) and inform all maths teaching in Primary Advantage schools.
PA Maths Resources