Maths Grants 2021

In 2021 the Jo Watlers Trust awarded £4,666 in grants to varous organisations across the UK to help further the teaching of maths. This money has been allocated as grants to the following projects and organisations: 

• Robert Douglas Memorial School Parent Council:£906.00 to pay for the equipment they need to build robots which the pupils will use their maths knowledge to code and then race around a specific course. 

• Barking Abbey School: £510.00 to build 'unlock the box kits'. This will make enough boxes for 2 class sets, one box per pair of students. They would have padlocks on which can be opened by the students when they solve each clue to encourage resilience in Maths and tenacity in the face of problem solving. This will be used with KS3 groups across year 7 and 8. 

• Jane Austen College: £100 to help start their students with the '£5 challenge'. This will enable them to give a group of students £5 to create a business and try and make profit. Any profit they do make is donated to charity, the £5 is given back so that the following term more students can take part. They hope this will inspire students to enjoy Maths and Business more. It will be aimed at students in Years 7, 8 and 9.

• Llantilio Pertholey Primary School: £450 to buy and make family mathematics packs so they can develop a 'maths library' of maths games and resources for our 3 Foundation Phase classes that our parents will be able borrow. This will contribute towards developing 90 zip wallets with a wide variety of maths games to engage children with maths at an early age. Each wallet would contain all of the equipment that would be needed to play the games, along with simple instructions. These home packs would also support the development of parental engagement in numeracy at home. Consolidating maths skills at home in this way they hope will help to develop pupils’ understanding of conceptual numeracy as they play games which enhance counting and addition/subtraction skills. 

• St Paul's School for Girls (Birmingham): £300 to pay for tickets for some of their A Level pupils to attend Maths Inspiration Lectures. The staff at this comprehensive school in Birmingham want to inspire their girls to pursue mathematics further than just A Level. They recently had their first Further Maths class (of 3 pupils) in a number of years and are aiming to raise the profile of further mathematics study/careers and give their students the confidence to continue with a subject which can be male dominated. They hope the hugely engaging Maths Inspiration lectures will mean that the speakers (successful and confident women in STEM) will help demonstrate the importance of mathematics and how interesting careers can be to their students.

• Sir Isaac Newton Sixth Form: £400 to introduce a maths team challenge across their schools, involving two able mathematicians from each year (7 to 10) from each school. The day will be led by the Sixth Form Further Maths students to enable pupils to enjoy the challenge that maths can provide and to build relationships with like-minded peers. Many of their schools are in challenging environments with disadvantaged students; where being excited about solving maths problems and exploring mathematical curiosity is not always possible. This team event will be used to create a positive maths environment

• Aberdeen Science Centre: £1,000 for their new project ‘Planet Protectors’ aiming to engage young people, and adults alike, in their local and wider environment whilst showing their audience that small actions can have big results. As part of the series ASC will be delivering a topic on soil science, which will demonstrate using real life applications the vital role mathematics has in helping us understand our environment. This project would be delivered through a blended approach, in person and remotely. The grant will fund the kits for the Soil Science topic within this, where visitors to the centre would be able to take part in a developed outdoor workshop, learning about soil science and carrying out experiments, with pH and moisture monitors. Families would then have the opportunity to record their results and would use statistical analysis techniques to track, visualise and present their numerical data. Measurements would also be an important part of the workshop, including soil depth and weighing different volumes of soil.

• Abergavenny Cluster of Primary Schools: £1,000 to buy more kit to expand a project they have already started. This cluster of schools developed an innovative transition project where secondary maths teachers come into primary school to teach. This allowed Y6 pupils to get to know staff and see that secondary maths wasn’t as scary as they thought! They found there were huge curriculum benefits to establishing a partnership between primary and secondary staff too, with their pupils becoming more engaged in maths and their outcomes improved too. The grant will allow all the primary schools in the cluster to have a bank of maths resources.