Mathematics *
The mathematics department’s philosophy is to create confident mathematicians who have an analytic mind, can organise their ideas and express their thoughts with confidence and ease.
The basic level of mathematics is to be able to count, add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Mathematics has developed into a diverse discipline that deals with data, scientific observations, deduction, proof and mathematical models of natural phenomenon’s such as Fibonacci’s sequence and the Golden Ratio.
Understand these and you will view the world around you in a significantly different way. This is what we want for learners at Harris Ockendon.
The importance of mathematics is increasing due to the application of its science and technology to day-to-day life. It is often considered as the building block for everything that we do in our everyday lives, including money, art, engineering, mobile phones and even sports.
The mathematics curriculum at HAOC has thus been developed to prepare our young learners with the tools they need to be ambitious masters of number and logical thinkers who are able to step into whatever field they desire. To start this journey, we begin by consolidating Number and Algebra knowledge then moving on to Shape, Ratio and Proportion and Data Handling. These are the building blocks that enable our students to look at the world differently, enjoy problem solving and achieve a deep-rooted knowledge of the fundamentals.
The curriculum is supplemented with real life examples to support the imparting of powerful, cultural capital in order to support students in gaining an understanding of the application of mathematics in the workplace or to fundamental life skills. Key examples include mortgage interest rates, VAT, the R number in the Covid pandemic and the use of bivariate data to examine correlation and causation and understand statistics thrown around on the news and social media.
Many employers will ask for a good grade in GCSE maths, even if their daily business doesn’t involve a lot of maths because employers value these transferable skills, which is why we recognise their importance and sequence them to be explicitly instructed.