Maths Mastery

Clifton Hampden CE Primary School is in the final stages of transitioning fully to a Mastery approach for teaching mathematics. This long journey has evolved over the past four years, beginning with the implementation of White Rose Maths. This initiative introduced a cohesive sequence of small steps and core concepts of Mastery teaching, supported by a commercial set of resources for teachers. After years of collaboration with the BBO Maths Hub, teachers are now exclusively using the NCETM sequence of learning to aid student understanding. This shift requires a robust subject knowledge of the curriculum and Mastery teaching from the educators.

What is Maths Mastery?
Teaching mathematics for mastery is a transformative approach inspired by high-performing countries, such as Singapore. By mastering mathematics, children develop fluency without relying on rote memorisation, enabling them to tackle non-routine problems effectively.

Teaching for Mastery
The philosophy behind Teaching for Mastery is that every child can succeed in mathematics with effort. This interactive teaching method fosters procedural fluency and conceptual understanding simultaneously, aligning well with our growth mindset philosophy.

How Does Maths Mastery Work?
In a mastery approach, the whole class progresses through content at a similar pace, as described in the National Curriculum (2014). Each topic is explored in depth, ensuring that children demonstrate a secure understanding of mathematical concepts.

Working with BBO Maths Hub

Over 85% of primary schools and 88% of secondary schools have collaborated with their local Maths Hub to implement Maths Mastery since 2016. Aligning our teaching with theirs enables us to meet the needs of the 21st century and ensures we cultivate strong mathematicians.

Time for Deep Thinking
Students are provided with ample time to think deeply about mathematics, allowing them to understand concepts relationally rather than merely as rules. This depth of understanding leads to greater progress, as students are secure in their knowledge after thorough exploration with opportunities for reasoning and problem-solving.

Building Self-Confidence
The mastery approach ensures that all pupils have access to the entire mathematics curriculum. This inclusivity, along with an emphasis on diverse methods for problem-solving, fosters self-confidence and resilience among students.

Current Practices for Teaching Mastery

Children are taught in mixed attainment groups, utilising fluid and focused group work as needed. Classes are organised to work on similar concepts, reducing attainment gaps for struggling learners while providing rich opportunities for all to deepen their understanding.

Every lesson includes challenges for all students, particularly those who quickly grasp concepts, prompting them to think deeply about mathematical ideas. They are offered complex problems before any acceleration to new content.

Additional support may include using tools to reveal the structure of mathematics, targeted questioning, and extra time or activities to reinforce understanding. These supports are tailored to individual needs and may occur outside of regular math lessons. We aim to adopt a same-day/next-day intervention model, enabling all students to "keep up, not catch up." Training for teaching assistants in this approach has commenced, and we continue to invest in high-quality professional development for our staff.

Challenge Through Depth, Not Acceleration
While the entire class covers the same content at the same pace, there are opportunities for a range of challenge and scaffolds to meet different students needs. Students who grasp concepts quickly face rich and sophisticated problems within the topic, while others may receive additional support before advancing.

Alignment with the National Curriculum for Maths
Teaching mathematics for mastery is integral to the 2014 National Curriculum. The NCETM, Department for Education, and OFSTED endorse this evidence-based approach, which is a significant part of the Maths Hubs Programme, in which Clifton Hampden CE takes pride in actively participating.

Key Principles and Features of Maths at Clifton Hampden CE Primary:

Fluency: Frequent additional practice through the NCETM Mastering Number programme supports children's fluency in number bonds, mental calculation strategies, and multiplication and division facts, emphasising the application to larger numbers and decimals through explicit teaching.
Problem Solving: Children engage in problem-solving activities that allow them to apply the skills they've learned.
Reasoning: Every mathematics session incorporates reasoning. Key questions are built into lessons, and students are encouraged to articulate their thinking using complete sentences and appropriate mathematical vocabulary. Teacher-student interactions delve into how answers were derived, why methods work, and what might be the most efficient strategies. Teachers are exploring the use of stem sentences to support mathematical reasoning language development.
Engaging Parents: Throughout the year, we offer parent workshops to assist parents and caregivers in supporting their children's mathematics learning.
Governor Support and Challenge: The Governing Body has receives regular updates regarding the impact of our teaching approaches, with opportunities to ask questions. The link maths governor has observed lessons to see our fluency and math sessions in action.
Assessment: Teachers are assessing understanding throughout every lesson and use this to adjust the following learning point or add extra practice when needed. Each unit is assessed at the end of the teaching sequence to inform termly teacher summative judgements. Both assessments complement each other, enabling teachers to swiftly identify underachievement and knowledge gaps, which can then be addressed through tailored planning and teaching. This allows for bespoke provision for each cohort, group, or individual as needed.

What Do the NCETM ‘5 Big Ideas’ Mean?

Coherence: Lessons are divided into small, connected steps that gradually reveal concepts, ensuring accessibility for all children and leading to generalizations that can be applied in various contexts.
Representation and Structure: Representations used in lessons highlight the mathematical structure being taught, enabling students to perform mathematics without relying on those representations.
Mathematical Thinking: To achieve deep understanding, ideas must be actively engaged with by students—thought about, reasoned with, and discussed with peers.
Fluency: Quick, efficient recall of facts and procedures, along with the flexibility to navigate different contexts and representations of mathematics.
Variation: Variation involves how the teacher presents the concept in multiple ways to emphasize critical aspects and foster deep understanding, as well as the sequencing of lessons and activities to highlight mathematical relationships and structure.

Further information on the 5 Big Ideas can be found in this set of videos from the NCETM.

Myth Busting surrounding Greater Depth/Gifted and Talented/Challenge

There are often misconceptions surrounding what "greater depth" or "gifted and talented" looks like.

Many believe that these are simply for children who are already "good at maths." However, the reality is that greater depth involves providing appropriate challenges for all students, regardless of their starting point. It's about pushing each child to reach their full potential, not just focusing on a select few.

The Maths Mastery approach promotes greater depth through:

Providing opportunities for all students to excel: The curriculum is designed to cater to a wide range of abilities, allowing all students to experience success and challenge.
Introducing enriching tasks and investigations: Our children are encouraged to explore mathematical concepts in depth through engaging projects and open-ended problem-solving activities.
Encouraging independent learning and research: Our children are empowered to take ownership of their learning by exploring mathematical topics in greater detail and conducting their own investigations.
Building confidence and resilience: By providing appropriate challenges and support, Maths Mastery helps our children to develop confidence in their mathematical abilities and build resilience in the face of challenging tasks.

Myths

Greater depth learning is separate learning opportunities for a select few. Greater depth should be viewed as a natural progression within the Maths Mastery approach. This ensures that every student is challenged, engaged, and supported on their individual learning journey.
If my child is working at Greater Depth they should be working with larger numbers. If your child is able to use greater number this doesn't necessarily mean that they are working at 'Greater Depth'. Greater Depth is more about a child's ability to verbally reason, explain their understanding, have the ability show their understanding in a variety of ways and to explore a concept through problem solving opportunities, which can involve real life contexts/scenarios.
My child should be learning content from the year above because they are good at maths. If your child is a strong mathematician that is great, this doesn't however mean they should be learning content from an older year group. If a child progresses too quickly through the content outlined in by the National Curriculum, then it means they will not be given enough opportunity to deepen their and understand the topics they are learning about. We want our children to build connections, see each topic as part of the whole picture (not as a stand alone area) and have a lifelong, secured understanding to prepare them as they move through school and into their adult lives.
My child is working quickly through their maths so they must be greater depth. In our school, we believe that being 'good' at maths doesn't always have correlation to how quickly they can solve the answer to a question. We would argue the point that it could be the opposite. Being 'good' at maths could also mean slowing down and having an in depth understanding of a mathematical concept alongside having rapid recall with their fluency facts.