Story Time Maths helps young children build strong foundations for maths and learning
Story Time Maths is helping nursery practitioners use stories, mathematical talk and purposeful play to support young children’s early mathematics, communication and wider development.
Led by teacher Helen Clarke, Story Time Maths has worked with 21 schools across Tameside, Stockport and elsewhere in Greater Manchester over the last 12 months.
The SHINE programme combines professional development for early years practitioners with a story-led approach to mathematics, helping children explore mathematical ideas through familiar, language-rich contexts.
A 2025–26 evaluation of the programme found children made progress across mathematics, communication, vocabulary and self-regulation, with statistically significant changes in nine of the ten outcomes tested.
Impact highlights
- The proportion of children meeting age-related expectations in Number increased from 32% to 85%, a 53 percentage-point increase.*
- In Numerical Patterns, the proportion increased from 29% to 86%, a 57 percentage-point increase.
- Listening, Attention and Understanding increased from 26% to 82%, while Self-regulation increased from 35% to 91%.
- The proportion of children meeting age-related expectations in communication increased from 29% to 86%, meaning 3.4 times as many children met this measure at exit.
- Nine of the ten outcomes tested showed statistically significant entry-to-exit change.
- 94% of practitioners reported increased confidence in teaching early mathematics, while 91% had already applied strategies from the training in their classrooms.
- 88% of parents reported doing more maths-related activities at home as a result of the project.
- Disadvantaged children made substantial progress, with encouraging evidence of comparable progress with their peers on key measures
Story Time Maths was developed to help address the early mathematics gap by giving nursery practitioners practical ways to develop children’s mathematical thinking through stories, talk and play.
The latest evaluation suggests that the approach may offer benefits beyond children’s mathematical knowledge.
Significant changes were also found in vocabulary, communication, self-regulation and aspects of executive function. The pattern is consistent with the programme’s developing theory of change: that stories and mathematical talk can create opportunities for children to practise several foundations for learning at the same time.
The impact was also reflected in changes to practitioner confidence and classroom practice. Most practitioners reported feeling more confident teaching early mathematics, and the majority had already put strategies from the training into practice.
One Reception teacher said: “Teaching maths more ‘in the moment’ and using the learning trajectories has made a huge difference.”
Families reported changes beyond the nursery setting too. 88% said they were doing more maths-related activities at home, with parents describing how the books and activities helped them bring mathematical ideas into everyday routines.
One parent said: “The books and activities have given us ideas for simple ways to use maths in our everyday routines. We now point out numbers and talk about ‘more and less’ at home.”
Story Time Maths was designed to help address the early mathematics gap between disadvantaged children and their peers, and the 2025–26 data shows strong progress among disadvantaged children during Story Time Maths delivery. The evaluation found encouraging evidence of comparable progress with their peers on key measures.
The end-of-year evaluation concluded: “Disadvantaged children made substantial progress across all areas and, in most measures, made gains comparable to their peers. This supports our hypothesis that Story Time Maths provides a rich context through which mathematical knowledge, language, self-regulation and aspects of executive function can be practised together.”
The findings are encouraging, but the evaluation is deliberately cautious about what can be concluded from them.
The analysis looks at changes within participating cohorts between entry and exit. There was no contemporaneous control group, so the results cannot establish that Story Time Maths alone caused the observed improvements.
Not every measure improved: Early Years Numeracy, for example, showed no statistically significant change in settings where comparable paired data were available. The Reception follow-up is also currently too limited to establish a sustained effect.
The evaluation data does not represent every child or every school that participated during 2025–26. The Nursery analysis is based on data from 103 children across four settings in Manchester and Tameside where sufficiently complete pupil-level data was available. Disadvantage status was recorded for 67 of these children.
These limitations are an important part of understanding the findings. The report describes the results as evidence that strengthens the programme’s developing theory of change and provides a rationale for further evaluation, rather than proof of impact.
Looking ahead
The findings will inform the next phase of Story Time Maths, which has received almost £100,000 of further SHINE funding over three years.
Helen will use this next phase to strengthen the programme’s evidence base while extending its reach to around 20 new nursery settings each year. The programme will develop a hybrid delivery model, combining live online training, on-demand modules and targeted in-person support, alongside a network of trained Story Time Maths Ambassadors.
Strengthening evaluation will be a key priority, including more consistent data collection across participating settings and more complete recording of disadvantage. This will help ensure that the evidence base develops alongside the programme.
Helen said: “I’m incredibly proud of what we’re seeing, particularly because Story Time Maths was created to help address the early mathematics gap for children experiencing disadvantage.
“Seeing such substantial progress in Number and Numerical Patterns is really encouraging, but what has been especially interesting is the progress we are also seeing in areas such as vocabulary, communication and language and self-regulation.
“It feels as though the evidence is beginning to reflect what we see happening in Nursery classrooms: when mathematics is rooted in brilliant stories, rich conversation and purposeful play, children have opportunities to develop lots of the foundations for learning together.”
Helen added: “We’re careful not to attribute all of the progress to Story Time Maths – children develop enormously during the Nursery year and there was no contemporaneous control group – but the consistency of the findings gives us a really exciting basis for the next stage of the programme.
“Most importantly, the data suggest that children experiencing disadvantage are making strong progress too, which remains at the heart of why Story Time Maths exists.”
“Our findings are encouraging and provide a strong rationale for further evaluation.”
* For Number, Numerical Patterns, Listening, Attention and Understanding and Self-regulation, “expected level” means children were assessed as working at Development Matters 3–4 or above. Communication was measured using WellComm, with the Green group used as the indicator.