Maulden Lower School
About Maulden Lower School
Situated in the village of Maulden in Bedfordshire, Maulden Lower School has 172 children on roll, with 35% of pupils coming from social housing. It sits in the top 5% academically of all schools in the UK.
The school prides itself on a high level of community involvement which it has worked hard over the years to build and nurture. In the most recent Ofsted report (2001), Maulden Lower was listed as the most supported' school with 45% of the children's families have some involvement with the school through the PTA, volunteer work, the Board of Governors, Saturday Sports clubs and other schemes.
Looking for new ICT and maths resources
Maulden Lower School's significant IT installation was completed in May 2005, around the time Abacus Evolve was being launched. With 48 PCs across all seven classrooms to be networked to 72" interactive whiteboards throughout, the school was keen to ensure the new equipment was fully utilized and so had already begun looking for an interactive numeracy solution.
Mike Jarvis, Head Teacher at the school since 1984 explains, "As a rule we always keep an eye on all the publishers and when Abacus Evolve came to market we already had materials from Ginn so were familiar with the quality of its work. The timely launch of Abacus Evolve was an opportunity to take full advantage of the school's new interactivity. Additionally, we had decided as a team we would like to have structural materials for the school-wide delivery of the numeracy strategy. Before then we had been using QCA materials and designing our own and so the holistic approach of Abacus Evolve was highly appealing."
The team at Maulden Lower concluded that Abacus Evolve met its IT and numeracy needs and went to its PTA to help with the funding of resources to facilitate a full implementation.
Installing Abacus Evolve
The IT side of things presented Maulden Lower with no problem at all. Although the school has external IT support through its local authority if needed, they managed to load everything to their new systems in-house without a hitch. Crispin Evans, e-Learning Consultant at Ginn then visited the school on an INSET day to run through the programme with the staff.
"I would say that if you're a reasonably proficient IT user you can get your way through Abacus Evolve quite easily. What made Crispin's visit worthwhile was that he enabled us to go through a high volume of content in a short period of time, he gave pragmatic advice on how to get the best out of Abacus Evolve in class situations and, most importantly, hinted at the wider possibilities presented by the programme like the notes for the teaching assistants, the planning software and the pupil tracking facility." Mike comments.
Bringing maths to life
All the teaching staff (except Year 4) are now using Abacus Evolve, and through it, getting the best out of the new interactive whiteboards in their numeracy sessions. Maulden Lower chose the biggest available interactive whiteboards to ensure the most powerful possible image and colour. Mike reports that the vibrant images of Abacus Evolve's whiteboard activities are really bringing maths to life in the classrooms and that the children are having fun with numeracy as a result.
"The key to learning at this age is to incorporate an element of enjoyment and pure fun. Before this technology arrived, you always required a highly charismatic approach from the teachers – something you can't do every day of the week! With specific regard to the numeracy programme, Abacus Evolve has been very successful because it brings certain areas of numeracy to life through enjoyment and fun. In my professional opinion, if Abacus Evolve was being used in a lower socio economic area, the school would experience an even more dramatic increase in pupil engagement and performance." Mike says.
For the classroom of the future
Maulden Lower School's teachers have also found Abacus Evolve to have a very positive effect and are reporting it gives them greater confidence because it is so professional. Planning for the first half of term was well underway by the time Abacus Evolve arrived and so they are yet to make use of all its features. Mike says that they anticipate more benefits as they take advantage of more of Abacus Evolve's tools, like the lesson planning and pupil monitoring package.
Mike concludes, "We are potentially at the start of a golden age in education as IT become embedded across whole schools and becomes a primary interactive teaching channel. That means the potential for education as a whole is only limited by creativity and budget. Resources like Abacus Evolve are indicative of the classroom of the future."