"The parents gave us feedback saying that the children were loving it."

Our KS2 maths results were a key area for development

It’s something that had been on our radar for the last 18 months or so. We needed our results to improve so we felt we needed to try something a bit different. We were really open to trying Third Space Learning. We felt like attainment would come with a rise in confidence so we were looking for something that would impact on that too.

We chose to use the intervention for pupil premium eligible pupils and those who have only just reached the expected standard at the end of Year 5, those we consider very much vulnerable to not reaching expected in KS2 Sats.

The pupils were really excited – all of them

The three pupils we chose last year, they were talking to the teachers about it a lot and they loved the personalised elements of the intervention.

Parents were only positive about it!

Their parents also gave us feedback saying that the children were loving it. We had one parent who was really enthusiastic about it – always asking what the pupils had been doing in their sessions. That’s a positive obviously, that the parents felt it was worthwhile.

It’s specialised time for pupils to do the learning that they need

We started the one-to-one interventions at Christmas and one child taking part was working towards the year 6 curriculum then – which meant that they had quite a long way to go in order to get the expected standard by SATs.

But because of the time that the teachers put in alongside the one-to-one intervention she was able to make quite a lot of progress in that short amount of time. A big part of that was that her confidence increased massively and she was able to relate what she had done in the intervention to what she was doing in class.

For pupils who are low in confidence and a bit scared of giving stuff a go in class – that fact that they can be given that one-to-one attention is a big thing.

Watch a session in action:

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