The secondary teaching for mastery programmes form a long-term support network for schools to develop highly effective classroom practices so all students develop a secure, deep and connected understanding of maths.

This is a bespoke programme of support, with the Work Group Lead spending most of their time working alongside and supporting the Advocates. Over an extended time frame, the progression should be from supporting Advocates to develop their own classroom practice, then enabling the Advocates to work with their colleagues, and finally developing their department’s structures and systems. In signing up to this Work Group, schools should appreciate that they have joined a long-term programme, so development will be a gradual process and the focus of activity will shift over time. 

Support from a Secondary Mastery Specialist will include a mixture of working directly with the Advocates as a group, and working with each individual school alongside the relevant Advocates. 

Work is likely to include the Mastery Specialist leading PD sessions with the Advocates to enable them to understand the principles and practices associated with teaching for mastery, and Advocates observing the Mastery Specialist in the specialist’s own school. It will also include the Mastery Specialist working alongside Advocates (and possibly other members of the department) to jointly plan individual lessons, sequences of lessons or longer units of work, as well as the Mastery Specialist observing and giving feedback to Advocates following a lesson.  

What is the cost?

These work Groups are fully funded by the Maths Hubs Programme so are free to participating schools. 
Each department will receive £2000 grant to enable the Mastery Advocates to work with the Secondary Mastery Specialist and thus enable them to work within their own department.

What are the intended outcomes?

In some of the classes of the Mastery Advocates, students will: 

• develop a deep, secure and connected understanding of the maths they are learning 
• achieve both conceptual understanding and procedural fluency 
• think, reason and discuss their maths in order to deepen their understanding 
• have a positive attitude to maths. 

Mastery Advocates will work with their school/subject leaders to begin to develop:  

• a common vision, culture and set of principles which align with those in the NCETM’s Essence of Mathematics Teaching for Mastery 
• teaching for mastery approaches within their own classrooms 
• an understanding of the leadership and management support required to enable them to effectively develop teaching for mastery approaches across the department. 

Mastery Advocates will: 

• develop classroom practices aligned to those in the NCETM’s Essence of Mathematics Teaching for Mastery. 
• begin to support the teachers in their department in developing these approaches in their practice. 
• have a deep understanding of the practices aligned to those in the NCETM’s Essence of Mathematics Teaching for Mastery. 

“I will be trying more problems where students have a bit more freedom with where they want to take a problem and look at how I can do that whilst supporting those who like a lot of structure. It will tie in well to looking at what makes a good mathematician and how it is not about ‘getting the right answer.

We will be sharing the ideas from the course as a whole with department once we have implemented the various ideas and seen what works well for us.”

Development Participant