Maths No Problem

[ConcernedTeacher]

It seems my school has decided to introduce this from September.

It will be put in place for all years excluding year 6 for the first year.

I just wondered what your experiences of it have been as both teachers and parents.

I don't want to say too much about it but I have some reservations. Let's put it like that.

What are your reservations?

Introduce what?

Mainly from other teachers citing things like a lack of progress, children not being able to access it fully independently especially in KS1, a significant drop in maths attainment. Key skills not being developed securely without a lot of additional input and teachers having to teach other methods alongside the MNP methods to bridge gaps in learning created by it.

I used it. And we changed to White Rose recently.

In my opinion and experience no maths scheme is perfect. Having taught the a number of maths schemes; the national numeracy strategy, Abacus, MNP and White Rose, I have to say that I found MNP to be the most comprehensive. All schemes have their faults. All of them are difficult to teach in KS1 if you just expect the children to open the book and crack on. A maths scheme is not a replacement for a skilled teacher.

ChompandaGrazia

That's good to hear. Yes, I've used all of those too among with the erroneously named Maths Makes Sense and agree that no scheme is perfect or substitute for a good teacher. However, I've heard more criticism of this one than any other and very little in the way of positives from teachers who've used it. They like aspects of it but aren't impressed overall.

It's good to hear that you had a positive experience of it.

I have used White Rose in conjunction with planning from scratch tailored to my class as well as other schemes over the last 10 years. Children made excellent progress. My current school invested in MNP about 3 years ago. Apart from decreasing workload as in theory it's all in the book I personally (along with many other staff members) hate it. It's aimed at ARE and greater depth children to develop mastery concepts but I find the pitch is way off. Cuspy ARE/Sen cannot access it without a great deal of support. Sometimes content that you teach doesn't match the work book. Progress with MNP is slower and children more confused. White Rose is much much better in my humble opinion!

That's we currently do - White Rose and own planning from scratch.

What you've described echoes what I've heard and that's what concerns me.

We used MNP but moved to something else in September. I found MNP very wordy which meant it was difficult in KS1 and for those children who struggle with reading.

Have used it before and white rose. Much prefer white rose.
Maths No Problem IS excellent in terms of developing reasoning and problem solving and the guy that developed it (Ban Har I think he’s called is amazing and does incredible training on it) but there are many elements of the scheme I wasn’t keen on - journaling being one of them, many of the lesson openers (always starts with an open ended question which can sometimes be good but sometimes slowed down pace from actually teaching anything) and many more reasons why I didn’t love it.
White Rose is also based on reasoning and problem solving but much more straightforward lessons to deliver and easier to differentiate appropriately. I’m a big fan of it.

An ofsted inspector who came into our school said that some of the best schools he’d been in used MNP. However he also said the worst ones used it too.
I think it’s all down to how it is rolled out and how much CPD the staff get before using it in their lessons.

Teacher of nearly 30 years, worst maths scheme I've ever used. Unworkable in mixed year class [rural area] unless the TA takes one year group, thus leaving struggling children with no suppot as the tA and teacher are both teaching the scheme.

I quite liked it, the only thing I found was there was a lack of reasoning and problem solving so had to supplement with these especially for your highers

From a parents perspective, my children found it really boring. They are fairly good at maths though so maybe it worked! They were in a school that took it very seriously - lots of training/ investment.

We use MNP and I like the journalling but the text books are too wordy for KS1 so you end up needing to read it for less able readers. It's very difficult for SEN pupils too. It's probably a bit old hat to say this but I find with MNP and White Rose the varied fluency aspect means that children never truly master one calculation strategy to equip them to answer questions in a test situation. So you have to teach them this anyway.

my colleagues and I used to call it Maths is a problem. Need I say more 🤷‍♀️ Used it with both year 1 & 4. Was better with year 4 but still not great.

We used it for homeschooling and the school I work at now uses it.
I really loved it - I wish I'd had that approach for my maths growing up and think I'd have been better at maths as a result.
I only used it as a home ed mum not a teacher so not fully versed in how it rolls out across the class but I would say that it is such a different approach that if the teachers haven't had good training it could be a problem.