'Several parents at Malorees Infant and Junior School in Kilburn wanted Mathletics for their child at £59 a year, so our PSFA thought we'd use our collective purchasing power to get a discount. This got us thinking – if the service is so good then every child should have it, regardless of income.Our school was also keen to try new ways to make maths fun.
We were aiming to buy a three-year Mathletics subscription for every child, but we didn't want the service to be taken for granted; we wanted pupils to feel they'd earned it, which is why we decided to run a sponsored event.
We gave pupils a week to gain sponsorship, with prizes for the classes that attracted the most sponsors (not the most sponsorship).
Armed with sponsorship forms, the children were set a "catch and count" challenge with the local rugby team, the Kilburn Cosmos. We worked with Cosmos to come up with the challenge as a way to learn about rugby, while making counting fun. Organised by the PSFA, the fundraising morning began with players from the team attending the school for a morning to teach all 440 of our children how to throw and catch in rugby. Our PE lead, Mr Cleary, then set the two-minute catch and count challenge, which was the element sponsored by parents and friends of the school. The pupils scored bonus points for correctly answering maths questions based on their scores.
The vast majority of money was raised separately by inviting parents and friends to donate online, but it was important for us that every child had been involved with raising money of some sort, so they would feel that Mathletics was a reward for their hard work.
It took just under a week to raise the money. We're a smallish state school with a very mixed social-economic demographic, which just shows how a campaign can capture the imagination when delivered in an imaginative way. Thanks to the generosity of parents and carers, we were able to purchase 460 Mathletics licences for three years. Paying upfront meant every child got a licence for less than £4 per year.'
Giles Deards, governor, Malorees Infant and Junior School, Kilburn, London (440 pupils)
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