We partner with state primary schools across London to support children in Years 2 and 3 who would benefit from help in maths. The school selects the children.
Our trained volunteers work one-to-one with each child once a week over the full school year. Sessions are during school hours but outside the classroom and involve games and other creative activities to engage the child and to help develop their confidence and skills in maths.
‘We have thoroughly enjoyed welcoming Number Champions into our school. The volunteers have been very child-friendly, patient and understanding. The children have all really enjoyed it and have grown in confidence alongside the improvement in their [maths] skills. It has been a wonderful opportunity for some of our children to have really concentrated one-to-one adult attention.’
— Partner school, Brent
If you are interested in becoming a Number Champions partner school, please have a look at our FAQs below, and then email us at [email protected], and we can discuss or send you more information as appropriate.
We designed our intervention in conjunction with teachers and other educational professionals. We continue to enhance it based on feedback from our partner schools and our volunteers.
At the end of each school year, we ask the class teacher to evaluate the child’s progress over the year on various measures. Teachers have consistently rated a very high percentage of children as showing an observable improvement in all categories.
In 2023-24, 85% of the children showed a measurable improvement in maths skills, 87% showed a measurable increase in confidence with maths and 80% were more engaged in classroom lessons. The detailed results are shown in our Annual Reports.
We also receive very positive qualitative feedback from teachers.
The volunteer will tailor the sessions around the needs of the child.
Sessions typically involve discussions and mathematical games as well as more conventional ‘classroom’ exercises. Often the volunteer will work with manipulatives, to help reinforce basic concepts and skills.
Our philosophy is to help children find fun and purpose in maths.
So, instead of asking the child ‘what number do you add to 4 to get 10?’ our volunteer might invite the child to pick a playing card and see if they can find a second card that adds up to 10. This can then become part of a game where the winner is the person who finds the most pairs adding to 10. Children are motivated by wanting to win and this also gives a framework for talking through strategies for adding and subtracting.
On the request of the teacher, the volunteer may sometimes work through specific examples or activities relating to current classroom teaching. However, the overall focus of our programme is to ensure that the child develops ‘number sense’ and a sound grasp of foundational maths skills.
Exact times depend on the school and on the volunteer, but will be during the school day. Schools generally ask volunteers to commit to the same time each week.
Sessions are 25 to 30 minutes, including taking the child to and from the classroom before and after each session.
The actual location will depend on the particular school but will be somewhere outside the classroom where there is a table and chairs. It should be reasonably quiet and also meet safeguarding requirements.
Volunteers are trained by a qualified primary school teacher and we have a large repository of resources on our website.
We equip our volunteers with a set of manipulatives such as whiteboard, dice, playing cards, number squares, tens frames, and Base Ten. Their in-person training and online support includes our Hyperlinked Curriculum which links web and PDF resources to individual skills within the National Curriculum.
All our website resources are freely available to schools and parents.
We ask that schools assist where possible by lending our volunteers materials which we cannot supply such as Numicon.
The volunteer normally sees three children during their weekly visit.
We ask teachers to select those who are behind in maths and are ‘working towards the expected level’ or on the cusp and who they think can benefit from dedicated help.
Our volunteers support children with a wide range of abilities, but are not trained to support children with special educational or additional needs; we therefore ask schools not to select children needing this extra support.
We agree this with each school, depending on its requirements. A single-form-entry school might want only two volunteers, but a larger school would usually have at least three volunteers. We introduce the volunteers to each other so that they can share experiences and ideas and cooperate in their approach to the school.
We charge schools a fee of only £60 per child for a full year. However, if the school finds a volunteer, we reduce this to £30 per child.
As a comparison, the Education Endowment Foundation rates a fee of £80 per child for a year as a ‘very low cost’ intervention.
Our fee is budgeted to cover about a quarter of our costs, with the rest coming from sponsors and donations.
We aim to establish an effective relationship with each school, both at a personal level with teachers and other staff and through structured communication around administrative processes.
One of our professional team will liaise with the school. In return, we ask that the school provides both a single contact for administration and also a teaching ‘coordinator’, typically the Head of Maths or a member of the Senior Leadership Team. This allows our volunteers to liaise about issues without having to interrupt classroom teachers during the teaching day.
It is helpful if the volunteer can email the teacher. This makes it easier for the volunteer to give periodic updates on the child’s progress, and equally to get feedback from the teacher so that the volunteer can optimise the intervention for the good of the child.
Our standard partnership agreement with schools includes safeguarding, data protection, etc.