Maths mastery

[RandomHouseRules]

Anyone any experience of Maths Mastery? Our school have recently introduced it. Do people (parents/teachers) feel it is a good approach? Does it provide a good grounding for all ability levels?

Sorry dont know - but a focus on maths wont harm - my kids are lucky ti get 15 of maths a day not long enough to practice. Will have a look.

Like most things, depends whether it's taught well or not. There seems to be some evidence that it provides a slight advantage compared to the old NC. And I think some schools have had very good results with it.

Seems to be built on solid principles and I doubt it will do any harm.

DDs school uses it and my school are looking into it. It is brilliant, really helps children understand maths rather than just know step-by-step what to do. DC at DD's school love it - it is very structured and the children like the routine. It moves away from the frankly ridiculous 5 way differentiation I've seen teachers in some schools having to do which I believe just widens the gap when differentiation has to be that excessive. It promotes all children moving at the same pace with more able just getting deeper understanding applying it to problems while less able get more intervention and support in the lesson to 'get it'. COmpletely different approach but very appealing.
Amazing results at some schools that use it - just look at ARK schools.

My dc's school uses this. From what I can see, it keeps maths concrete for longer, instils a really solid understanding of number and place value, and really focuses on ensuring that children have an inside out understanding understanding of things like inverse operations.

One of my children in Y3 has gained a lot of confidence in maths as a result; she could 'do' various methods before but I don't think she really 'understood' eg multiplication grids. I've noticed while doing homework with my Y1 child that it makes it much easier to see what bits they don't get eg that a 2 in the tens column means 20 not 2, than more standard methods.

It makes a lot of sense to me, I must say.

giftedphoenix.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/maths-mastery-evidence-versus-spin/

Thanks to PiqueABoo for referencing my post.

I really want to contribute to the discussion by referring you to another post, but last time I attempted that on Mumsnet I got told off for spamming.

However, since the guidance says 'We have no problem with people posting the odd link to other sites/blogs that other posters might find useful or interesting', I'll risk it one more time.

This post asks questions about whether maths mastery provides sufficient challenge - and sufficient variety of challenge - for children who find maths easy and are high attainers.

giftedphoenix.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/a-digression-on-breadth-depth-pace-and-mastery/

Is there any evidence that it does harm high achievers though? The graph of ks1 results in your blog would suggest that it might not. How reliable the results are is unknown, but it does seem to have produced considerably more high achievers than the national average, with a cohort that has nearly twice the levels of deprivation than the national cohort and therefore might be expected to have results lower than the national average.

I thought the evidence (so far) is that it doesn't stall high achievers. If anything, it enables more children to be successful at maths because it instils a very solid foundation of the basics and essentials.

I was 'high achieving' at maths up until 'O' level. I got an 'A" but I knew then as I knew now that I wouldn't have been able to take it any further because although I had been taught various methods (and have a very good memory, so it was no problem for me to reproduce this in exams) I didn't really, really understand all of it.

As education is a marathon, rather than a spring, I would be reluctant to describe all but a very few 6/7 year olds as 'high achievers' in any subject. But I would prefer that all children were given good foundations.

It's the same principle as reading and writing. A few children will naturally have a flair for and interest in language, do an English degree, maybe even become a writer etc, but they all need to be taught thoroughly how to construct a sentence, spell and punctuate inside out.

I think you're referring to the graph in my earlier post, reproduced from Maths Mastery's Primary Yearbook 2014-15. That gives a little information about performance at L2b and above and L3c and above, though we can't see the outcomes at each sub-level and this is drawn from a small and unrepresentative sample of schools.

The EEF evaluations themselves suggested little difference in the effect of the primary intervention relative to prior attainment, but some evidence of disproportionate benefit to the lower attainers in the secondary intervention.

If you accept the argument that the full impact can only be established from longer term evaluation, then that applies equally to the impact on high versus low attainers.

I would certainly like to see more robust evidence of the impact of maths mastery on learners according to prior attainment, but I was unable to find anything published. It would help schools that are considering whether to sign up to see such evidence, I would have thought.

My second post is asking whether the pedagogical approach is suitably rich and diverse for all high attainers. I understand the argument for firm foundations - and I'm not suggesting that they should be neglected - but I do wonder whether an unremitting diet of the kind of problem-solving described by NCETM is unnecessarily narrow and impoverished.

Sorry, I was just referring to primary schools. I didn't realise that MM included secondary provision too.

I would tend to agree with Rafa that it depends on how it's taught. Synthetic phonics schemes like RML can be utterly tedious and drawn out, with the focus all being on 'the scheme' rather than the individual child, or they can used as a stepping stone on to love of reading and writing. I imagine that any structured maths provision has the potential to be the same.

I don't think it's necessarily about being dull but it's a very different pedagogy to the one currently in most UK classrooms. It's going to take teachers time to be able to confidently plan for that I think. I think it's likely that the top end might be more disadvantaged by this than the bottom. Teaching high attaining children the same content but in a deeper context is something most teachers won't be used to. I just don't think that we currently have any evidence that that is the case. Possibly it's something that might disappear as teachers become more confident in teaching this way.

I do think they will produce more evidence that will show either way.But it's a very new scheme that's being rolled out and adapted as it goes along. The 2 months additional progress in year 1 is so close to being statistically significant, I wouldn't be at all suprised if the additional evidence did start to show a significant difference. They might need to find a better assessment tool though.