MATHEMATICS (Moscow)

Capital of Russia and the largest city in Europe, Moscow is one of the world’s major economic centres and a hub for Russian and European Mathematics.

Alongside the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation founded by Peter the Great in 1701, Moscow is home to the Steklov Institute of Mathematics established in 1934 and the Moscow Mathematical Society, a group which first met in 1864 and continues today with aim to develop mathematical learning and research in Russia. Moscow is also the resting place of the oldest mathematical text discovered.

Belonging as part of the collection at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and dated between 2134 and 1991 BC, the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus is approximately five and a half metres long and varies between four and eight centimetres in width. It is divided into twenty-five puzzles with solutions, its ancient use intended for education and entertainment.

At Henry Beaufort School, Moscow is home to Mathematics and is fitted with all the resources to make the subject engaging both theoretically and when applied at a practical level. Maths classrooms are fitted with interactive whiteboards with video and audio capabilities and there are fifteen laptops loaded with software dedicated to the subject, allowing flexible use of ICT in all of the classrooms.

Mathematics

Mathematics contributes to the curriculum by developing pupils' abilities to calculate; to reason logically, algebraically, and geometrically; to solve problems and to handle data. The subject, universally recognised as important in its own right and one which transcends cultural boundaries, helps us understand the mechanics of our world and is essential for many other areas of study, particularly Science and Technology.

In Years 7 and 8, a body of knowledge is built and developed around the subject’s key concepts: quantity, structure, space and change, creating a solid foundation for higher levels of mathematics. Extending mental and written calculation strategies, students become confident in calculating with integers, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio and proportion, and able to solve a range of familiar and unfamiliar problems, including those drawn from real-life contexts and other areas of the curriculum.

Mathematics is a core subject at GCSE and compulsory for all students. Expanding on previously acquired knowledge and skills, students advance their mathematic abilities to study more complex areas of the subject. Throughout the course, students take their mathematical experience and apply it to practical situations, drawing inferences from data, considering how statistics are used to make informed decisions and recognising the difference between meaningful and misleading representations of data. There is substantial use of tasks focussed on using appropriate ICT to solve numerical and graphical problems and students learn to represent and manipulate geometrical configurations and to present and analyse data.