The Educator Magazine U.K. September - December 2025 issue. - Magazine - Page 42
Breaking the Cycle of
Low Maths Attainment
Paul Jenkins is a former headteacher and
the Secondary Effectiveness Advisor
for Curriculum at HFL Education.
As the new Year 7 arrive at school, with their
new rucksacks, sharpened pencils and pristine
scientific calculators, they also carry with them
their standardised scores categorising them
at, above or below the national average.
For maths, the latest SATs scores reveal that
26% of students failed to hit the expected
standard. However unreliable these scores
may be, they are the marker set at the start
of secondary school and the base point for
progress measures.
Those labelled as ‘low prior attainers’ soon
find themselves in ‘bottom set’ with other
‘low ability’ students, and for many this is the
start of five years of struggle resulting in an
unimpressive set of exam results which limit
their future - not through lack of ambition or
want of trying, but because we are just not
doing well enough to support accelerated
progress in those who start behind their
peers.
The Problem: Fluency as a Barrier
examples to consolidate learning, most managed only two or three. Their cognitive focus
shifted from the new skill back to the insecure
basics around the arithmetic; therefore, they
just didn’t get enough deliberate practice at
the new knowledge to make it stick.
A simple fluency test involves giving students
a set of mental calculations to complete within
a time limit. This yields three scores:
Breaking the Confidence Cycle
Confidence is vital in maths. The less confident
learners are, the more fearful they become
of mistakes and the more laborious their
calculations – particularly when under time or
expectation pressures. Fluency requires trying
something new, working at speed and, sometimes, getting things wrong. The Catch22 here
is that they often lack the confidence they
need to risk short-term failure in order to build
long-term confidence gains. It is the teacher’s
job to make sure that during the early stages
of developing fluency, students feel reassured
that they don’t have to be correct all the time.
• Together these form a fluency score.
Understanding and Tracking Fluency
Signs of poor number fluency include reliance
on column methods for simple additions
and using fingers or number lines for basic
calculations.
A helpful framework for understanding
fluency is:
• Coverage: how many questions attempted
• Accuracy: how many answered correctly
Over time, teachers can vary the types of
calculations to assess which strategies
students use and where gaps remain.
To improve fluency, students need:
• Explicit teaching of mental strategies
• Practice applying the right strategy to the
right numbers
• Encouragement to choose efficient methods
that reduce cognitive load
Matching the strategy to the numbers is
critical to avoid students just swapping their
over-reliance on the column method to
another strategy. An adept mathematician
would use different strategies to calculate
37+43 compared to 60+70. The training has
to enable them to identify, from the numbers,
the best approach to use.
Underconfident students should focus first on
coverage—completing more questions, even
if some are wrong. This builds speed and
reduces perfectionism. Overconfident
students should focus on accuracy and be
asked to note the strategies they choose; they
may be relying on a few techniques which
are inappropriate to the numbers and
inadvertently making mental calculations
harder.
Students need both speed and accuracy.
Speed without accuracy establishes the wrong
habits; accuracy without speed limits capacity
for new learning.
Building on Primary Experience
Fluency is the ability to accurately manipulate
numbers mentally at a reasonable speed using
the most efficient method of calculation. Many
students can complete arithmetic tasks with a
degree of accuracy, but without fluency, they
take longer and expend more cognitive effort
by relying on laborious, long-hand methods of
calculation. This leaves little cognitive capacity
for higher-order thinking.
Often, when secondary teachers go “back to
basics”, they start with times tables.
However, it can often be more effective to go
back another step and focus on addition and
subtraction. Secondary teachers can benefit
from understanding the specific maths
pedagogy used by the best primary
practitioners, so they can use and build on the
students’ prior experience, strategies
and approach.
As a consultant I saw this in practice in a maths
lesson for low prior attainers. The teacher
expertly explained how to multiply out
brackets. The class engaged well during guided practice and appeared to understand in the
‘we do’ phase of the lesson. However, during
independent work, their weak number skills
slowed them down. Instead of completing ten
Early Exploration and Diagnosis
The first step is identifying how fluent
students are and diagnosing what’s holding
them back. Students who are both slow and
inaccurate need to focus on accuracy first;
speeding up without accuracy only
compounds errors.
By addressing fluency early in secondary
school, teachers lay the groundwork for
success in more complex maths. Without this
foundation, students will continue to struggle,
unable to consolidate new learning or master
key topics. Breaking the cycle of low attainment starts with building fluency—quickly,
confidently, and consistently.
Visit https://www.hfleducation.org/home
and search for Making Fluent and Flexible
Calculators for more support on improving
foundational maths skills.
