Primary school numeracy support

Organiser: Number Champions

When

What

Number Champions supports state primary school children who are behind in maths. Our trained volunteers use games and other creative activities in weekly one-to-one sessions in schools hours for the full school year to engage the child and help them aquire interest, confidence, and skills in the subject.

• The school signs a partnership agreement with Number Champions.
• The school selects children in Years 2 and 3 who are behind in maths and could benefit from one-to-one support
• The school supplies basic information on the child's needs in maths.
• Number Champions provides a trained volunteer to run weekly one-to-one sessions with each child. The volunteer will tailor sessions to the needs of the child, aiming to help them improve their engagement, interest, confidence and skills in maths.
• (Number Champions recruits volunteers under a safer recruitment policy which includes interview, checking ID, taking references, and doing a DBS check. Training is by trained teachers and includes safeguarding.)
• Sessions are weekly in school hours for the full school year. The school provides a suitable location for the sessions.
• The school provides a Coordinator from the teaching staff who will liaise with Number Champions. Number Champions appoints a staff member to liaise with the Coordinator.
• The school will ensure that teachers are in email communication with the volunteers, so that they can coordinate activities for the benefit of the child.
• At the end of the school year, the teacher will provide an evaluation of the child's progress over the year.

• We work with Years 2 and 3 as research (supported by teachers) shows that early intervention is most effective.
• We train our volunteers to make extensive use of manipulatives, as a large number of the children we work with have not made the leap to abstract reasoning.
• Over 60% of the children schools select to work with us have been from disadvantaged backgrounds

• The school needs to supply a suitable location for the sessions.
• The school does not have to provide someone to attend sessions (although of course they can observe a session if they wish)
• The school pays a fee of £60 per child per year, but we reduce this to £30 if the school finds a volunteer from its parent/guardian community
• The school needs to give basic information on the child's maths needs at the start of the school year, and a simple evaluation of progress at the end.