Your memories of Maths at school may well include standing in front of the class reciting times tables. Mine certainly do. When teaching Maths, that is the last thing I want to do. At Cargilfield, our aim is to develop and embed a fluency, creating a deeper knowledge and understanding of underlying mathematical concepts.

Maths is not simply about the classroom or times tables – it is immersed in our daily lives. And whatever your thoughts on the subject, everyone has the ability to harness it in one way or another. There is a common misconception that you are either “good” or “bad” at Maths, but Mathematics is entirely logical: there is no mysterious magic or trickery involved. I so often hear “well I was no good at Maths at school”. Funnily enough, I wasn’t confident in Maths until the age of 12, when it all clicked into place. I went on to study Maths in my later years at school and now I have a strong passion for teaching the subject!

Even though most of us rely on technology these days to do a calculation, you still need to be able to choose the correct operation (multiply, divide, add or subtract) to tackle the problem at hand, and mental arithmetic is still a constant in daily life. For example, working out a 20% discount. Your brain follows a process: 20% is the same as one-fifth, so you divide by 5, then subtract your answer from the original price. Others might divide by 10 then multiply by 2 to work out the saving. Without being conscious of it, you are using Maths. In fact, your first thought of the day may well be a mathematical one when you open your eyes and look at your alarm clock.