Intervention

Date of issue: May. 2004

Audience: Key Stage 2 teachers, Heads and deputies, Coordinators

Intervention

The National Numeracy Strategy aims to raise standards for all children. Some children may need extra support beyond the daily mathematics lesson. The Strategy has produced a range of intervention programmes for schools to support children so that they can catch up with their peers. A brief summary of each programme follows.

These programmes have a number of common features:

they operate in the context of high quality teaching during the daily mathematics lesson;
they are based on the assessment of progress against key objectives for mathematics;
they are designed to help children who need support to accelerate back to the age-related expectations of the Framework for teaching mathematics from Reception to Year 6;

The use by many schools of intervention programmes has been impressive. The longer-term goal is to support schools in providing systematic intervention for children whenever they fall behind their peers. The aims of the programmes are:

To set the expectation that these children will catch up with their peers.
To support the identified children and to remedy particular weaknesses in number so that they are in a better position to access and benefit from the teaching programme in Key Stage 2.
To help teachers to prepare a teaching programme enabling children to benefit fully from the main teaching programme as soon as possible.

The programmes have been developed so that they can be used flexibly. They are designed to be integral to the teachers planning and supportive of the work in the daily mathematics lesson.

Where schools have received funding for the springboard programmes children are being supported with extra sessions outside the daily mathematics lessons.