Case Study: How One Primary School Improved Maths SATs Scores with Abacus
When Oakfield Primary's headteacher, Mrs. Sarah Nolan, sat down with her Year 6 data in September 2022, the numbers told a familiar story. For the third consecutive year, Oakfield's percentage of pupils reaching the expected standard in KS2 maths had fallen below the national average — 62% against a national figure of 71%. The gap was not catastrophic, but it was stubborn, and it was narrowing the school's options.
"We'd tried the usual things," Nolan recalled. "A commercial maths scheme, some targeted TA support, after-school revision sessions in the spring term. The scores moved slightly, then drifted back. Something structural wasn't working."
Oakfield Primary is a two-form entry state school in Salford, Greater Manchester, with 420 pupils on roll. Approximately 34% of pupils are eligible for Pupil Premium — slightly above the national average — and the school serves a mixed catchment that includes a significant proportion of families for whom English is an additional language. It is not a school with unusual challenges. It is, in many ways, an average English primary school facing average English primary school problems.
The Challenge: Limited Budget, Stretched Teachers, Mixed-Ability Classes
Nolan's maths coordinator, Mr. Ranjit Sharma, had been tracking the issue more granularly. The problem wasn't calculation understanding — Oakfield's pupils performed reasonably well on written method questions and word problems. The gap was in mental arithmetic fluency: the ability to recall and apply number facts rapidly, without reaching for a written method or a counting strategy.
"When you're doing a SATs arithmetic paper under time pressure, slow mental recall cascades into everything," Sharma explained. "A pupil who has to count on to find 7 + 8 is spending cognitive resources that should be going towards reading the question correctly or checking their answer."
The budget position made external solutions difficult to sustain. Oakfield's core budget for enrichment and intervention ran to approximately £18,000 per year — spread across reading recovery, speech and language support, a breakfast club, and sport. A conventional maths tutoring programme at commercial rates would have consumed roughly 20% of that budget for a cohort of 30 pupils.
Class composition added another layer of complexity. Year 5 and Year 6 contained wide attainment ranges — from pupils working significantly below age-related expectations to pupils performing at greater depth. A programme that only benefited one segment of that range would be hard to justify.
The Solution: AnzanPro After-School Club
In November 2022, following a recommendation from another Greater Manchester headteacher she knew through a local school improvement network, Nolan contacted AnzanPro. Within three weeks, a scoping call, a curriculum alignment review, and a governor-level cost approval had been completed.
The agreed model was an after-school club running twice per week — Monday and Wednesday, 3:30–4:15pm — targeting Years 4, 5, and 6. The programme would be delivered by an AnzanPro-certified tutor, with a limit of 24 pupils per session to maintain a quality learning environment. Pupil Premium-eligible students were given priority places, with funding drawn from Oakfield's Pupil Premium allocation (approximately £1,385 per eligible pupil per year).
The total annual programme cost — tutor time, platform licences, materials, and reporting — was £3,200 for a 36-week academic year, equivalent to £133 per participating pupil. Pupil Premium funding covered the places of all 18 eligible participants; the remaining 6 places were offered at no cost to the school, funded by AnzanPro's school partnership subsidy for first-year programmes.
"The cost was the thing that made it possible," said Nolan. "At that price point, I could justify it in a governor meeting without breaking a sweat."
Implementation: From 10-Week Pilot to Full Programme
The Pilot (Spring Term, January–March 2023)
The first ten weeks were structured as a formal pilot, targeting Year 5 (27 pupils enrolled; 23 attending regularly). The cohort completed an AnzanPro baseline diagnostic in the first session — a 20-question timed mental arithmetic assessment covering number bonds, multiplication facts, and multi-digit addition and subtraction.
Mean baseline score: 11.4 / 20. Only 7 of the 23 regular attendees scored 14 or above — the threshold the team set as a proxy for solid mental fluency at expected Year 5 standard.
Sessions followed AnzanPro's Level 1 and Level 2 curriculum: introducing the soroban abacus frame, learning bead values, representing two- and three-digit numbers, and practising single-digit addition and subtraction with the physical abacus before beginning to internalise the bead movements as a mental image.
By Week 6, most students were working without the physical abacus for simple calculations. By Week 9, the fastest students in the group were performing two-digit additions mentally at a speed that visibly surprised their class teacher, who observed a session.
"I teach these children every day," said Year 5 class teacher Miss Priya Okafor. "Watching some of them race through 10 mental calculations in 30 seconds — children who count on their fingers in my lessons — was genuinely shocking. Something had clicked."
End of pilot diagnostic: mean score 14.1 / 20 — an improvement of 2.7 points, or 24%, over 10 weeks. 16 of the 23 regular attendees now scored 14 or above.
Full Year Programme (September 2023–July 2024)
Buoyed by the pilot data and — critically — by the parent showcase session at the end of the spring term (which drew 31 parents and generated a 4.8/5 satisfaction rating), Nolan extended the programme to a full academic year. The cohort now included Years 4, 5, and 6. Year 6 pupils entering the programme were identified as a priority, as they were 8–10 months from sitting their KS2 SATs.
Year 6 participation was 28 pupils, with an average attendance rate of 81% across the year — above the 80% threshold AnzanPro identifies as the minimum for reliable outcome measurement.
The Year 6 cohort began at Level 2 (building on the Year 5 pilot experience for returning students) and progressed through to Level 4 by February — a faster trajectory than typical, attributed by the tutor to the group's prior exposure and high motivation.
Results: The Numbers and the Stories Behind Them
KS2 SATs 2024 — Mental Maths Component
Oakfield's Year 6 SATs results in summer 2024 showed measurable movement. The percentage of pupils reaching expected standard in maths rose from 62% (2022) to 71% (2024) — bringing the school to the national average for the first time in four years.
More specifically, performance on the arithmetic paper — the component most directly affected by mental fluency — improved by 12 percentage points compared to the equivalent cohort two years earlier. The Year 6 cohort's mean scaled score on the arithmetic paper rose from 95.3 to 103.1.
8 pupils achieved the expected standard in maths who, based on their Year 5 teacher assessment data and prior attainment trajectory, would not have been predicted to do so. Of those 8, 6 had attended 75% or more of AnzanPro sessions.
"I want to be careful not to overclaim," said Sharma. "SATs results have many variables. But the improvement in arithmetic paper scores — specifically in the mental calculation section — maps almost exactly onto the skills we were practising in the programme. It's not a coincidence."
Teacher Observation Data
Sharma had asked class teachers to complete a five-point observation rubric at the start and end of the year, covering number confidence, calculation speed, sustained attention, and willingness to attempt challenging problems.
Across the Year 5 and Year 6 cohorts, mean teacher observation scores improved by 1.4 points out of 5 — a statistically meaningful shift on a rubric where a one-point change represents a clearly observable difference in classroom behaviour. The largest gains were on "sustained attention during numeracy tasks" and "willingness to attempt without scaffolding" — both of which reflect the concentration and confidence benefits documented in the research literature.
What Parents Said
The end-of-year parent survey (22 responses from 28 Year 6 families) recorded:
- 95% agreed or strongly agreed that their child had become more confident with mental maths
- 91% agreed or strongly agreed that their child enjoyed the sessions
- Net Promoter Score: 72 (scores above 50 are considered excellent for education programmes)
- Representative comments: "My daughter started correcting my mental maths in the supermarket"; "He went from hating maths homework to doing it without being asked"; "Best thing the school has ever offered"
Lessons Learned
Attendance is everything. The 8-student gap between the school's programme results and the AnzanPro benchmark for comparable cohorts was almost entirely explained by attendance. Pupils attending fewer than 60% of sessions showed negligible score gains. Oakfield has since implemented an SMS reminder system (integrated with the school's Arbor MIS) and a simple reward card scheme for consistent attenders, which has lifted average attendance from 81% in year one to 87% in the current year.
Parental buy-in is the force multiplier. Families who attended the end-of-pilot showcase had children with attendance rates 14 percentage points higher than families who did not attend. Oakfield now runs a brief parent induction session before each new cohort begins, with a live demonstration of what the children will learn. It takes 20 minutes and returns disproportionate value.
Teacher observation amplifies programme impact. When class teachers observed sessions, they began incorporating abacus-inspired visualisation prompts ("picture your beads") into their own numeracy lessons. This informal reinforcement happened without any formal instruction and was cited by the AnzanPro tutor as a significant factor in the Year 6 cohort's faster-than-usual progression.
What's Next for Oakfield
In September 2024, Nolan expanded the programme to Years 2 and 3 — an earlier-entry cohort who will have four years of structured abacus practice before they sit their KS2 assessments. The school has also nominated two teaching assistants to begin AnzanPro's school educator certification pathway, with a view to delivering Level 1 and 2 sessions in-house by the 2025/26 academic year.
"The pilot gave us evidence. The first full year gave us results. The plan now is to make this part of what Oakfield is," said Nolan. "Five years from now, I want mental maths to be a genuine strength of this school — something the community knows us for."
Oakfield's story is not extraordinary. It is repeatable. The combination of a structured programme, a motivated tutor, and school leadership willing to commit to consistency produced outcomes that the school had been unable to achieve with any previous intervention. The programme cost less than a single year of targeted TA support and delivered measurable attainment gains that will persist through the children's secondary school mathematics careers.
If your school is facing similar challenges with maths attainment and mental fluency, the evidence is there. The question is whether to act on it. Visit anzanpro.com/schools to speak with a school partnerships manager, download the case study data pack, and see how an Oakfield-style programme could be structured for your cohort, your budget, and your timetable.
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