We support children in state primary schools who have fallen behind in maths. Helping them overcome 'the maths barrier' can have a positive effect on their engagement with education as a whole.
Our In-School Volunteers work one-to-one with children in school time but outside the classroom to help them build their maths skills and confidence. Sessions are about 30 minutes weekly through the school year.
Our impact is to improve the educational and life chances of these young children.
We recruit schools as partners. Class teachers select children from years 2 and 3 who can benefit from support in maths, and we recruit and train In-School Volunteers to come to the school to run weekly one-to-one sessions with each child outside the classroom in normal school hours. We also have former teachers who volunteer as 'Mentors'; these train the In-School Volunteers and support them through the school year.
We currently partner 30 schools across 13 London boroughs, supporting some 300 children. Over 60% of the children we worked with last year were judged by teachers to be from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our 3-year plan is to grow the number of children we support annually and to spread further across London,
We have a clear strategy to build organisational structures and to extend our funding sources. We are also in dialogue with academics to progress independent evaluation of the impact of our programme for children.