This month, Franklin Scholars is pleased to be supporting the Hastings Opportunity Area Maths Challenge! For this challenge, which is designed to create a fun way of engaging children and young people with maths, our staff developed the school resources for a ‘Maths Marathon’.

The Maths Marathon is free for every primary school in Hastings and St Leonards, and is taking place from July 8th to July 11th. In each school, pupils from all year groups will contribute to see how far the school can collectively run (can they all collectively run to Rome? What about Moscow?). As part of the Marathon, a number of maths-based challenges will be applied to analysing distances run, and schools will be able to compete with each other. The school packs and lesson plans can be found on the Hastings Opportunity Area website. More information on the Maths Challenge can be found here.

Our ability to provide expertise for this Maths Challenge, is thanks to our support from Nesta’s Maths Mission. With support from Nesta, we have deepened the team’s expertise in maths, and developed a numeracy strand within our Beacon Franklin Scholars programme. This programme pairs peer mentoring with academic support, so that students develop not just important social and emotional skills but also feel more confident in their mastery of number. Thanks to Nesta, we have been able to successfully pilot the programme and are expanding to new schools next year. We have also been able to share some of our resources with parents to use at home with their children, such as during last month’s Maths Week London.

Good luck to all of the participants in the Hastings Math Challenge! We look forward to seeing how far you can run!