Mathematics in the National Curriculum (Key Stage Three) 2007

The Education Act 2002 implemented the legislative commitments set out in the White paper Schools Achieving success. It was a substantial and important piece of legislation intended to raise standards, promote innovation in schools and reform education law.

The Act added the Foundation Stage as a statutory part of the National Curriculum and created a legislative distinction between Key Stages One to Three and Key Stage Four. This was in order to make possible changes to the Key Stage Four curriculum in future to provide opportunities to tailor education to the needs of individual students.

The National Curriculum for England at Key Stages Three and Four was published by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) in 2007, and implementation in schools started in September 2008.

The most significant change was the emphasis placed on teaching key concepts and key process by drawing on the breadth of the subject, the content of which had changed very little, but was less detailed in the PoS than previous versions.

The key concepts to be developed were Competence, Creativity, Applications and implications of mathematics and Critical understanding.

The key processes of mathematics (Representing, Analysing, Interpreting and evaluating and Communicating and reflecting) were defined as the essential skills that students need to learn to make progress. These were encapsulated into AT1 Mathematical processes and applications.
The remaining ATs were:
AT2: Number and algebra
AT3: Geometry and measures
AT4: Statistics
Explanatory margin notes helped to exemplify the content and processes.

The importance of mathematics was made clear through a leading statement:
“Mathematical thinking is important for all members of a modern society as a habit of mind for its use in the workplace, business and finance; and for personal decision-making. Mathematics is fundamental to national prosperity in providing tools for understanding science, engineering, technology and economics.”

Further guidance on the development and delivery of the curriculum stressed the need to offer opportunities for students to:
*develop confidence in an increasing range of methods and techniques
*work on sequences of tasks that involve using the same mathematics in increasingly difficult or unfamiliar contexts, or increasingly demanding mathematics in similar contexts
*work on open and closed tasks in a variety of real and abstract contexts that allow them to select the mathematics to use
*work on problems that arise in other subjects and in contexts beyond the school.

Descriptions for levels 4-8 and exceptional performance only had minor changes made in order to take account of the mathematical processes.