The pathways
Every child joins the pathway that matches how they are thinking, which is not always the one that matches their age.
Your child's year group is where the conversation starts, not where it ends
Each pathway covers a broad stage of primary maths, and the year groups below are a guide rather than a rule. What actually decides placement is the diagnostic assessment, because two children in the same class can need very different things.
We have placed Year 6 children in Flexible Number Thinking and Year 5 children in Connected Understanding, and both were the right call. What matters is where the gaps are, how securely the foundations were laid, and how the child reasons out loud.
A pathway is not a judgement about ability. Each one runs as an intervention group for children rebuilding foundations, and as an extension group for children who are secure and ready to be genuinely stretched.
Foundational Understanding
For children who need core number sense rebuilt properly, using highly visual and physical tools until numbers stop feeling random and start feeling predictable.
- Building number sense. Securing place value and column methods, so your child feels in control of a calculation rather than at its mercy.
- Fluency and connections. Moving into multiplication and fractions through visual walls and models that make the idea click.
- Reasoning and confidence. Applying it to time, money and decimals, which is where a child proves to themselves that multi-step problems are within reach.
Core Connections
For children ready to move past counting strategies into the flexible problem solving that upper primary demands.
- Number mastery. Formal methods for larger numbers, alongside the reasons behind factors and multiples rather than just the definitions.
- Fractional reasoning. Bar models that make improper fractions and mixed numbers something a child can see instead of something they have to trust.
- Spatial reasoning. Connecting fractions to decimals, and carrying that reasoning into measurement and statistics.
Flexible Number Thinking
For children preparing for SATs and upper primary extension, where the aim is choosing an efficient strategy rather than reaching for the only one they know.
- Advanced reasoning. Numbers up to 10 million, and long multiplication and division done with understanding rather than by ritual.
- Linking concepts. Moving fluidly between fractions, decimals and percentages, and into ratio and sharing.
- Applying logic. The transition from arithmetic into algebra, geometric formulas and statistical averages.
Connected Understanding
For children making the jump to secondary, building the bridge between primary arithmetic and genuinely algebraic thinking before Year 7 asks for it.
- Secondary thinking. Algebraic notation and BODMAS embedded into the mechanics of calculation, not bolted on afterwards.
- Cross-domain links. Connecting ratio to geometry, and handling two-step equations without losing the thread.
- Strategic independence. Independent logic for real world puzzles, statistics and early algebraic proof.
All four pathways can be seen side by side in the full pathway framework.
Two ways through
Every pathway runs in both directions
The same pathway can be the right home for a child who needs the foundations rebuilt and for a child who has been finding it all rather easy. They are simply in different groups within it.
Intervention groups
Where a foundation never quite set, we go back and set it. That means moving more slowly through fewer ideas, with more representation and more talk, until the structure underneath is solid enough to build on.
Extension groups
Where a child is secure, we stop adding content and start adding depth. Unfamiliar contexts, several valid strategies to weigh up, and problems where the first idea does not work.
Not sure which one fits?
That is exactly what the assessment is for, and it is the part we would rather you did not guess at. Send us a few details and we will work it out together.
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