Brereton Church of England Primary in Cheshire is a school, which inspires a love of life and learning in all students and pride themselves on the highest standards of care offered to students and their families.
One of the teachers, Natasha Woods has been at the school since 2014, is someone who wears numerous ‘responsibility’ hats and who is an integral member of the school leadership team. As both SENCO and KS2 lead, Ms. Woods had been searching for a mathematics learning tool to assist SEND students (5-11 years) and for lower attaining students in UKS2 (9-11 years) for a while now but could not find anything suitable.
In October, Ms. Woods was sent details of Emile Education through the Cheshire East LA Inclusion Team and was eager to find out more. Once all the information was provided by Team Emile, she set up groups of students via her teacher portal and introduced the resource to staff during a short CPD session. Once colleagues were all aware of how Emile would work as an intervention tool, Ms. Woods then explained the process to the students and with an initial modeling of how the game-based learning tool worked, children were eager and raring to go!
Brereton C of E, have focused on the times-tables and fractions strands and children are ‘loving how their learning is geared to their current attainment level and once confidence increases, the intensity of questioning and problem-solving increases too!’ This is something that is very important for all children who have a fear of certain concepts or have struggled with maths in general over time. Even SEND children, who may struggle to keep up in class are wanting to compete against their peers, are enjoying the fun aspect of learning and do not realise that the teachers/ SENCO are able to continually get a formative assessment of where the gaps in learning are. Tailored next steps are then so much easier than looking for appropriate worksheets, which in turn reduces teacher workload.
Ms. Woods explained that students have been using the desktop version until now, however, the app was due to be downloaded onto the school’s tablets as a priority. One of the main reasons for this would be that it would make it easier for teachers to provide short bursts of intervention, in class and at any time during the school day as the devices were mobile.
Ms. Woods also stated that the communication, assistance provided and ongoing updates by Emile Education had been excellent to date and that the highly competitive pricing structure was a very pleasing change to the high costs from other maths educational resource providers. We were keen to let the school know that Emile Education has seen rapid progress from students nationally, with some making 12 months progress in one term and so it is definitely worth purchasing to see ‘progress over time!’
Emile Education, who visited the school asked whether there was home access too. The teachers across the school had made a unanimous decision to keep it school-based for now so that children were always eager to use in school- so far the results have been highly positive from them and the school is wanting to keep the momentum going for us going as long as possible! We, at Emile, did explain that with students being able to compete against each other, within a safe portal- home access could be granted with a class challenge set to maintain the ‘fun element.’ We know of teachers who have set ‘whole class challenges’ of 3500 correct questions over the weekend and find that by Monday, that number has been doubled or even trebled, so the fear of waning interest might never happen! Fluency, however, will definitely happen!
What are the next steps for the future of Emile Education at Brereton C of E Primary?
A huge thank you for Brereton C of E Primary and Natasha Woods, for allowing us to speak with the students and for wanting to make a positive difference to the attainment of children under their remit. A further thank you to the Cheshire and East Local Authority Inclusion Team, for both their positive excitement for Emile Education and sending details of it across to schools across the LA.
We run online demo’s daily for teachers throughout the year. They are a great way to see Emile in action and see if it’s right for your tutor group, school or MAT.