25% of pupils in English primary schools did not achieve the expected standard in mathematics at the end of Key Stages 1 and 2 in 2017. That’s an average of 9 pupils in every year group in every school who have fallen behind and could be helped by an Every Child Counts programme.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s Improving Mathematics in Key Stages 2 and 3 report recommends that schools should ‘use structured interventions to provide additional support’ when pupils need to catch up. It states that, although ‘schools should focus on improvements to core classroom teaching that support all children in the class . . . some high-quality, structured intervention may still be required for some pupils to make progress.’

ECC interventions meet all of the report’s criteria for an effective intervention, including:

EEF CriterionECC Mathematics Interventions
Interventions should happen early, both because mathematical difficulties can affect performance in other areas of the curriculum, and in order to reduce the risk of children developing negative attitudes and anxiety about mathematics.ECC has a range of interventions that can be used from Year 1 to 9, as soo as they are needed.
The intervention should be informed by the evidence base regarding effective teaching and the typical development of mathematical capabilities. How does the intervention relate to the recommendations in this guidance report? All ECC interventions embody the recommendations of the EEF report. They make extensive use of diagnostic assessment, manipulatives, representations, and problem solving.
They develop pupils’ number sense, conceptual connections and metacognitive skills. Tasks and resources are carefully chosen and structured to support the learning of key concepts and skills.
Interventions should include explicit and systematic teaching. This should include providing models of proficient problem solving, verbalization thought processes guided practice, corrective feedback, and frequent cumulative review.All lessons are based on intensive, structured teaching. Pupils are helped to talk about their mathematics and are able to receive immediate feedback in a small-group situation. Every lesson concludes with a review of learning.
Effective implementation is essential to success. Interventions require careful planning and use of school resources, including staff…. The EEF’s ‘Making Best Use of Teaching Assistants’ provides guidance on the effective deployment of Teaching Assistants.A link teacher is trained with the teaching assistant to ensure that the school understands how to manage each intervention and to support the TA or teacher. All ECC programmes
embody the EEF’s Making Best use of Teaching Assistants advice.
Ensure that connections are made between intervention and whole-class instruction…. The key is to ensure that learning in interventions is consistent with, and extends,
work inside the classroom and that pupils understand the links between them.
The link teacher manages liaison between the intervention teacher or TA and the pupils’ class teacher or mathematics teacher to ensure that two-way links support the pupils’ learning.
The intervention should motivate pupils and prevent or counteract the association of mathematics with boredom or anxiety. The use of games, for example, is a recurring
feature of promising programmes, especially with primary school children.
ECC interventions are reassuring, highly enjoyable and stimulating for pupils, making extensive use of carefully designed games.
Pay careful attention to what a pupil might miss if they take part in an intervention. Will they be missing activities they enjoy? Will they miss out on curriculum content that
they need to learn?
ECC interventions are delivered in addition to pupils’ normal mathematics lessons. Schools are given guidance on timetabling to ensure that disruption to other learning is minimised.
It is important to avoid ‘intervention fatigue’ from the perspective of both teachers and pupils. Interventions do not always need to be very time consuming or intensive to be
effective.
Most interventions run for 30 minutes, 3 or 4 times a week for about 10 weeks. They are deliberately kept short to avoid overload.