National Curriculum Tests
Implications for teaching and learning from the 2003 tests
KEY STAGE 1 MATHEMATICS
Well done: some examples of progress and continued success
General
Number
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Generally children
achieving level 2 and those
achieving level 3 attempted
all questions in their tests
with the exception of the
last few questions, which
were the most challenging.
Almost all children working
at level 3 recorded working
where questions asked
them to do so.
Children responded
positively to questions
attributed to using and
applying mathematics,
even if they were not able
to reach the correct
answer.
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Almost all children working at
level 2C are able to count using
numbers up to 20, and most are
successful at repeatedly adding
fives.
Most children working at level
2C and above are successful at
reading data from simple tables.
Most children working at level
2B and above are successful at
ordering two-digit numbers.
Most children working at level 3
are successful at recording
four-digit numbers.
Most children working at level 3
are successful at ordering
amounts of money using
pounds and pence notation.
Most children working at level 3
are successful at solving
multiplication or division
questions using facts from the
x5 multiplication table.
Shape, space and measures
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Most children working at
level 2C and above are
successful at selecting a 2-D
shape described by the
length of its sides.
Most children working at
level 2C and above are able
to recognise centimetres and
metres as measures of
length.
To help children improve their performance, teachers should:
General
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Encourage children to record working to help them solve problems and answer questions for which they lack the mental skills or
knowledge. Answering such questions requires children to plan what they have to do, communicate what they do to solve
each stage of the problem and check their work to ensure that their working and answer make sense in the context of the
problem;
Problem Solving
Communicating
Reasoning
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encourage children to take
more care in reading the
provided information when
solving problems;
help children to identify and
complete the steps that are
required to complete a twostep problem;
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provide opportunities to use and
interpret mathematical
vocabulary in a range of
contexts;
support children, particularly
boys, to communicate clearly, in
written form, the methods they
use to solve problems. This
may involve recording the
stages in mental calculations;
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provide children with
opportunities to interpret
remainders in division
problems set in a variety of
contexts;
provide children, particularly
those working at level 3, with
more opportunities to
visualise and reason about
shapes;
Number
Numbers and the number
system
Calculations
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continue to monitor the way
that children working at or
below level 2B record
numbers, to encourage
correct formation and
discourage the reversal of
digits;
continue to provide children
working at the lower end of
level 2 with addition or
subtraction sequences and
ask them to work out the
rule that creates a
sequence, encouraging
them to apply it
consistently;
help children to develop
strategies for giving
reasonable estimates of
the position of numbers on
numbers lines;
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provide more opportunities for
children to work with fractions to
develop their understanding, so
they progress from working with
one-half to one-quarter and then
three-quarters;
continue to help children develop
strategies for solving addition and
particularly subtraction problems
that involve bridging the tens, for
example using knowledge of place
value or self-drawn number lines;
encourage children to look carefully
at the operation symbols in a
calculation, i.e. ‘+’, ‘-‘, ‘x’ and ‘÷’, to
determine which operation is
required;
discuss children’s strategies for
solving simple missing number
problems to help them apply their
understanding to harder problems.
continue to use coins, particularly
with children working at level 2, to
develop children’s understanding of
coin values and help them with
money calculations;
Processing, representing and
interpreting data
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pose questions on bar charts
that encourage the children
to interpret the scales
accurately and to respond to
complete set of data, for
example, How many children
does the graph show were in
the class?;
provide more experience of
using low-criteria Carroll
diagrams, with an emphasis
on children describing the
objects in each region by
referring to the labels
showing the relevant criteria
for the region;
Shape, space and measures
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provide opportunities for children to become more familiar with the properties of 2-D and 3-D shapes and interpreting pictures of
3-D shapes;
provide children with strategies to remember and interpret left and right, for example in movements and in using simple maps;
provide more opportunities for children to choose appropriate units of measurement to match a particular context;
develop children’s knowledge of relationship between familiar units of measurement, for example months in a year and grams in
a kilogram;
provide situations where children can use movement of hands on an analogue clock to support them in calculating the passage
of time.