Secondary Mastery Advocate Training

What is involved?

Secondary maths teachers whose schools want to introduce and embed teaching for mastery can nominate two teachers (Mastery Advocates) to join a Work Group. You will be part of a locally-based group of teachers who meet regularly to develop professional knowledge and expertise, as well as receiving bespoke support.

In a Teaching for Mastery Work Group you will:

• collaborate with colleagues from other local schools to share best practice
• get individual school support and guidance from a local leader of maths education (LLME)
• take away ideas to help your students become more confident mathematicians, ready to tackle GCSEs and A levels
• introduce and embed teaching for mastery in your classroom and department

Mastery Advocates

The fully funded programme enables you and another teacher from your school to become ‘Mastery Advocates’. Initially you will be part of a Work Group for a year. You will also get in-school support from a Mastery Specialist. Beyond this, you will continue to work with your local Maths Hub and take part in a Work Group as you embed mastery across your department.

This opportunity is suitable for teachers with the commitment, experience and authority to lead developmental work across the department. It requires the support of your headteacher or a member of SLT.

What is the cost?

The Secondary Teaching for Mastery Development project is fully funded by the Maths Hubs Programme so is free to participating schools.

What will you learn?

Hear from teachers who have taken part in a Work Group:

Ben Bentley, Head of Maths of Yavneh College, said about our Development Mastery Workgroup:

“The Mastery Development group was a real eye opener for us. It made us understand the importance of the sequence of questioning and not just giving pupils a random selection of questions to complete that relates to examples done in class. It gave us much more clarity on how to challenge pupils with reasoning questions as well as how to represent maths. Our department rarely used manipulatives before the Mastery Development group but now use them on a more regular basis. We now have Departmental meetings every fortnight where we share different methods and representations of maths. We love using variation theory to create resources. Our year 8 cohort are the first year to learn in the Mastery Maths style and the use of mathematical language of our year 8 pupils is far superior to many of our KS4 pupils of similar ability. It is definitely a group that we would recommend.”

Donna Singleton, Head of Mathematics, Kings James Royston Academy, says about the mastery approach:

“Like many, I have always been an advocate of teaching using mastery methods in primary school.  I came to teaching mastery a bit through the back door.  I was reading about methods that I didn’t know were mastery-based.  They made so much sense I decided to try them.  The impact on learning was immediate and measurable.  Students began to truly understand concepts, develop real number sense and understand how changing certain numbers would affect the answer.  With nothing to lose, I began using mastery methods with both high and low attaining pupils.  In both cases, deeper understanding was evident.  Last year, one of my year 10 foundation students forgot the Pythagorean theorem during his end of year exam.  He decided to tackle the problem using trigonometry instead.

I haven’t entirely changed the way I teach.  I have only made small changes so that things I do all have more impact.

I have begun developing mastery in my team.  They love it!.”

Click here to complete an application/EOI form or for further information go to the NCETM site for more details.