On Selection, Grammar Schools and Mastery

Yesterday evening, like every other Conservative Party Member, I received an email from Theresa May, outlining her plans to create a meritocratic Britain. A Britain that forces more universities and public schools to use their wealth and influence to aid improvements in State schools, a Britain that aims to give “our most academically gifted children the specialist and tailored support that can enable them to fulfil their potential”. I like the sound of that.

But also, a Britain that encourages the use of taxpayer money to increase the link between State and Church by encouraging the expansion of faith schools, “especially new Catholic schools”. A Britain that, yet again refuses to allow a school structure to have any time to settle by introducing the potential redesign of the entire landscape.

I should say, I have no particular beef with Grammar Schools. I have read all the same research and evidence as everybody else, I know that a system of Grammar Schools and Secondary Modern Schools does not advance social mobility and isn’t really effective in improving standards anyway. But I am not as livid as many of my peers in the education world who have been nearing nervous breakdowns in the last day or so.

This is because I know that the argument has nothing whatsoever to do with the evidence and, in the mind of voters, has pretty much nothing to do with the education workforce. The majority of people are not teachers, do not read education research. They are just people whom, once upon a time, went to school. Those who have children do not look at their own little darlings objectively. The Grammar School debate for the average parent is really one about how they remember school and what they believe about their own children.

Successive governments have overseen a dark time in schooling for some decades now. Behaviour has worsened and teachers have become browbeaten.

And we have now moved to the point where children who attended these schools are now the young parents who are thinking about where to send their own children. Those parents who attended schools in the 90s and 2000s will often remember a schooling that was about the needs of the one, rather than the many. They will remember sitting in classrooms where hours and hours of time each week was wasted, stolen away from them even, because teachers were ‘dealing’ with a tiny number of individual kids whose behavior became more and more extreme as we moved through the 2000s. Perhaps they now look at their infants and, rightly, think to themselves, ‘why should me child have to put up with that?’

A great trick that parenting plays on you is that it is almost impossible to think your child isn’t special, isn’t wonderful. Of course they could pass an 11 plus, one thinks when looking into their toddler eyes. They could attend the ‘good’ school, away from distraction. They could have an education that is about knowledge and challenge, rather than one designed around naughty children who don’t want to learn.

Of course, everyone denies this kind of thinking. It just isn’t right on, is it?

But who has ever said of their infant, ‘well, they’ll probably be quite thick and end up in a dump of a school.’ No one. Ever.

The debate around Grammar Schools is an emotional, not evidenced based, debate.

Parents who attended schools, which they recall as being low in aspiration and challenge or full of disruption and pandering to the children who were out of control because nobody would do anything about behavior, don’t care about what facts and figures say. These parents feel state schooling let them down.

And perhaps it did.

But, over the last 5 years in particular, a change has been happening.

The Prime Minister signs off the email with the line “And over the coming months and years, that is the better Britain that we are determined to build: Britain, the Great Meritocracy.”

Interestingly, I believe that there is a danger that the result will instead be a slowing down of what had been an emerging movement of educators driving a new approach to meritocracy in England’s schools, which I wrote about in the blog The Rising Meritocracy back in 2014.

This new movement of educators is a violent reaction to their voice being denied for years and years. Changes at the DfE and Ofsted in the last 5 years and the increasing influence of a movement of teachers who believe in high aspirations and expectations, have just started to show promise.

Nick Gibb, the schools minister, has been relentlessly driving the promotion of a mastery approach for mathematics.

As someone who has been writing about and promoting mastery approaches for the past couple of decades, I find much of this rhetoric from the DfE most welcome.

Mastery, which at its heart is just very good use of formative assessment, is a long established model for schooling, starting with Wasburne in 1921 and really popularized by Bloom in the 1970s. Much of the approach is present in high performing jurisdictions, such as the Pacific Rim countries.

The key characteristic of a school system where a mastery approach is truly embedded and successful is that cohorts of children will be working on the same mathematical concepts as each other. Not at the same level, of course. Every mathematical concept is infinitely broad, so there is no holding back truly bright children who will spend a great deal of their time studying a concept to a much greater depth than the school curriculum requires. I’ve had kids working on the 3D Bernoulli Equation in the past!

Concepts are arranged hierarchically such that whatever is being studied has a firm foundation of prior knowledge and skills already in place.

In a mastery approach, the length of time spent on any given concept becomes completely fluid (which is fine, because they are all infinitely broad), because the cohort does not move on to the next concept until all students have become secure in the concept at hand.

In other words, a mastery approach does not require any segregation of children based on ability, because all children are gripping the concepts. All children.

Introducing a mastery approach takes a long time, because it necessarily requires starting from day one. You can’t introduce a true mastery approach from, say, Year 7.

It is therefore really difficult to square the introduction of selection based on ability and the true belief in a mastery approach. Either mastery works or it doesn’t. If it does, selection on ability is simply not required.

I said at the beginning I have no real beef with Grammar Schools. I should come clean and tell you, during the 90s and 2000s, I would have voted for their return. This is because there had been an increasing trend in education to fail truly bright children. There had been a long race-to-the-middle, instead of recognising academic excellence.

I know there were attempts, and the Strategies gave a nod to Gifted and Talented (whatever the Hell that’s supported to mean), but in all honesty, really bright kids did not receive the education they were capable of.

If creating ‘special schools’ for these bright kids was the only way to provide them with that education, then yes, I would have voted to see the widespread return of Grammar Schools.

But there are green shoots of support for a schooling system that values knowledge and celebrates excellence. There are comprehensive schools up and down the country demonstrating time and again that a rigorous, academic schooling can be delivered to all. There are nowhere near enough of those schools yet and the ‘oh, not those kids’ attitude of those who believe that being poor means being consigned to a school diet of namby-pamby subjects and low expectations is still strong. But I have certainly felt a change, witnessed as I travel around the country visiting schools and meeting teachers at our events. Among this group, and the likes of Michael Wilshaw, there is a true desire to make all schools academically brilliant. It’s really hard to do, but very good head teachers are proving it can be done no matter what the circumstances.

Perhaps the belief at No 10 is that these successes are not scalable. Perhaps they are right. But what if they are wrong?

What if we are at the beginning of an actual improvement to all schools, just 5 years into the journey, and we pull it all apart by changing the entire landscape yet again?

My belief (I could be wrong of course, but all education reform is a gamble), is that the direction of travel was just starting to be the right one.

If we want all schools to be great, if we truly believe in a mastery approach to schooling where all children learn everything and the exceptionally bright go way beyond school level, then how can the argument be won?

Firstly, it is worth considering that there actually is no argument even taking place. The Grammar Schools announcement has no mandate by manifesto and is almost certainly not going to make it through both Houses (even if the Commons let is pass, which is already not a given, then the Lords will almost certainly reject it). So, from one perspective, the announcement may not be about education at all. There would certainly be a sense in creating a hullabaloo that led to a call for an early general election (to establish whether the mandate exists or not). As a Tory Party Member, I would be delighted for this to happen because the party majority would increase enormously at any election called now whilst the Labour Party is out to lunch.

Being less cynical, suppose this truly is about education and MPs head off to their constituencies to take the temperature of support for the proposal. Well, support for Grammar Schools polls pretty well, though not as overwhelmingly as some would like to believe. But most MPs would come to the vote torn and slightly incentivized to vote in favour of the Bill.

What might change this support in the electorate? As I have already said, it won’t be educational evidence (no one outside of education cares) and it won’t be facts and figures about how likely their child is to get in (everyone thinks their child is good enough), it will instead be emotions and memories.

Personally, the big change I would need to see happen before calling for no new grammar schools would be a serious and rigorous policy of supporting, challenging and advancing truly bight students in comprehensive schools. This is red line for me. We must stop failing exceptional kids.

Some will argue that this flies in the face of a mastery approach. This is, of course bunkum, for the reasons outlined earlier. But I understand why people are starting to think this. The messaging around mastery has been an absolute disaster. NCETM have singularly failed to communicate an accurate and consistent message – they have simply been ineffective at winning the PR war – and schools across the country are implementing the most watered down, disastrous nonsense believing that mastery means no differentiation or that the whole of a term should be spent on, say, Place Value because a scheme says so rather than looking continually at assessment data and using it formatively. Many so-called mastery approaches that I witness in schools mean that really bright kids are stuck working through mundane material on a concept because the teacher does not know how to extend it infinitely (or, at the very least, to the level the child deserves to be working on). Mastery, in some schools has become a race-to-the-bottom. So sad.

I believe that Nick Gibb is sincere in his desire to have schools working in a true mastery approach, but the mechanics deployed to date have not only failed to achieve this but, in many cases, are causing more harm than good.

This is my red line, but parents have many differing histories and incentives. The argument needs to be won that comprehensive schools do not have to be places of low aspiration or bad behaviour or the myriad biases that the 90s and 2000s have imbued in this generation of young parents.

If we can have a comprehensive system where all are challenged, where poor behavior is stamped out, where really bright kids get to excel in academic subjects much in the way a young Olympian does in sport, then we can avoid another fracturing of the education system and truly have educational excellence everywhere. Fingers crossed.

Where is your Mathematical Bar?

There are many things in education, which seem taboo to discuss, of great importance when considering how to realistically improve the quality of classroom practice.

The most effective teachers are those with highly developed, subject specific pedagogical and didactical knowledge and skills, combined with excellent subject content knowledge.

This content knowledge should, to be most effective, go beyond the national curriculum. Only knowing the diet of content that students will meet, prevents one from seeing the connections in mathematics (or subject of your choice) and the place that a certain concept, idea, fact or skill takes in the grand scheme of learning the subject.

The teacher census each year tells us some of the facts. We know, for example, that of all the teachers teaching mathematics in England day in, day out, only around 24% of them have studied mathematics beyond school level. We know, for example, that many thousands of children are being taught mathematics (even at high school level) by adults trained in other subject or adults with no training whatsoever.

But these facts only give us an insight into those cold workforce and structural things, which although they matter a great deal, do not reveal what is happening on the ground.

I would like to ask you, dear reader, where your mathematical bar lies. By this, I mean at what level of mathematics are you completely comfortable and confident in being able to walk into a room of students and teach a concept, skill or fact off the cuff? This might sound like a silly question at first, but my experience in visiting many, many schools across the country is that many, many children are being taught lessons by a teacher who is, in lots of cases, only one hour ahead in learning the topic themselves. I don’t offer this as a criticism, but as a sincere discussion point. I think it would be a helpful thing to acknowledge, discuss and address. I think that subject specific content knowledge is of such great important, yet is so rarely the focus of CPD.

Maths teachers will, on the whole, happily discuss these issues when they are talking about, say, the highest modules on Further Pure Mathematics or preparing bright sixth form students for a STEP paper or Cambridge Entrance Exam. It is not uncommon to hear teachers ask for help with understanding some of the content in ‘Mechanics 2’, for example.

Initiatives, such as the ‘Further Maths Support Programme’, have done great work in helping teachers to improve their subject knowledge, but I do wonder if it should be okay for teachers to be just one lesson ahead. Should someone teaching Further Pure Mathematics have their bar set at, at the very least, second or third year undergraduate mathematics? Should they be comfortable and confidence in teaching, say, fluid dynamics, abstract algebra or vector calculus, so that they can see where the topics they are teaching these bright teenagers are heading?

Where is your bar?

Teachers will often tell me it is at GCSE level and that they are not happy to teach A Level maths. Some teachers will say, Key Stage 3 is where they stop and that the idea of having to teach 3D trigonometry or statistical methods to a top set Year 11 makes them break into a cold sweat.

Where is your bar?

It is tempting to believe that the bar is only an upper limit, but, in fact, the lowest level that your bar can go to is equally as important.

Recently, during some talks I have been giving to secondary and primary school mathematics leaders, I have asked the audience whether they know, understand and can explain what counting, addition, decimals and place value are. Not surprisingly, all said they could indeed. We then did some (hopefully interesting and amusing) activities to reveal that, actually, very few of the delegates did have a full grasp of these seemingly simple areas of the curriculum.

I regularly visit schools and hear of ‘those kids’ who will ‘never get’ maths. They are, let’s say, 15 years old and can’t number bond to 10. Yet, when challenged, it is very often the case that their teacher does not know and cannot deploy strategies and didactics that would lead to the student being able to grasp the topic.

This is an exceptionally common issue and one that makes perfect sense. All of the real intellectual demand of teaching school level mathematics happens at the early concepts. It is far more demanding of a teacher for them to master how to get a child to understand the sense of a number or how to add or what multiplication, place value, a base system, or a whole host of other early fundamentals actually are, than it is to get a child to be able to solve a quadratic equation.

So, teachers have an upper and lower bar. Where do yours lie?

More importantly, how do we go about making the range larger between these bars? How can we get teachers to improve their subject specific knowledge when all around them they are faced with mindless initiatives and policies that take up all of their time, but have no impact on the quality of teaching?

I think that one important step to take is like a mass coming out. It can be difficult for a teacher to say they are not completely secure in their subject knowledge. I recall entering the profession myself, having had a mathematical career to date that focused almost exclusively on pure mathematics, mechanics and modeling. My knowledge of statistics was pretty dire, yet I was asked from day one to teach A Level statistics. When I told the head of maths that I was garbage at stats, he told me I shouldn’t own up to things like that. I thought this terribly odd, having come from industry (where if you don’t know something, you tell someone and they help you to get it sorted). My subject knowledge of the lowest level concepts was also weak. After all, I was a mathematician by trade, had spent years working with very high level maths and it seemed like an age since my mind had ever had to give any thoughts whatsoever to things like ‘what is a number?’

I have loved expanding the range of my subject knowledge, upwards into advanced statistics (to plug the gap) and right down to the earliest concepts (to ensure I can plug any gaps children might have).

I now try to help teachers expand the range of their subject knowledge, through the events I run and my termly MathsConf.

Subject specific knowledge and subject specific pedagogy and didactics are the single most important ingredients in improving the quality of teaching. So, even if not for public discussion or in the comments below, I do feel it is helpful if we all ask ourselves where our bars lie and how we might push them a little bit each year.

If you are willing to share your stories, please do comment below - it would be great to collate some examples of teachers coming out of the subject content knowledge closet.

A Response to Nick Gibb

Margaret Thatcher famously rebutted a criticism by telling a reporter ‘I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.’

Ad hominem is that oh so favourite tool of those seeking to shut down debate, to silence, to snuff out freedom of thought and expression. In education circles it is rife.

I have been told many times by teachers and educators that my view doesn’t count because I am a Tory. Rather than grapple with facts and argument, those with an ideology to push will often resort to personal attack and, like Thatcher, I am uplifted because it only reveals that lack of depth and rigour of their argument.

This morning, The Guardian published a piece by Schools Minister, Nick Gibb (the full text can be found here), which seeks to shut down debate by calling those who argue with the central assertion, racist.

Of course, the words are carefully chosen to avoid such a harsh word, but Nick writes ‘Those who try to dismiss their methods using crude national stereotypes’ and accuses anyone who demurs of ‘narrow-mindedness’.

It is a very fashionable political tool at the moment to use an accusation or racism, homophobia, transphobia and a range of other taboos.

It is a real shame that Nick has decided to use this approach, rather than engaging with the real debate.

Teacher exchanges are wonderful. I have had the great pleasure over the years to be involved in several in differing cultures. I also have the great privilege nowadays to spend time in schools across the country and around the world. Every single teacher can learn from each other. Collaboration is an incredibly important ingredient of effective professional development.

Nick asserts that teachers in Shanghai are highly effective and that their teaching is of high quality. He is absolutely right, it is.

But his argument that those who challenge the current DfE policy are making ‘ crude national stereotypes’ misses the point. There are many of us who talk about culture. But we are not talking about culture in the wider sense (though of course, this is important), we are talking about the culture in the school. The culture that is built up in the classroom. These things are crucial.

Rather than avoiding the cultural debate (for fear I may be shot down as a racist), I think it is at the heart of the issue. We teachers cannot change our model of society, but we can create a culture in our schools of high expectations, a culture that is explicit in stating that every single child can be successful and then demanding that they are, a culture that ensures every single child grips every single mathematical concept and does not accept a conveyer belt approach to curriculum.

Speak to your own Chief Inspector of Schools, speak with the many head teachers running schools in the most challenging of circumstances who are achieving excellent results, speak with colleagues in the many incredible independent schools across the country. All of these people have created effective cultures and values in their schools.

Nick, I am not a racist. And I do not accept that critics of current policy should be silenced. Debate is important in getting to the real issues and making real change.

Attainment in mathematics is exceptionally high in Shanghai. Should we learn from what is happening there? Of course. It is obtuse to shut down any opportunity to learn.

But it is equally obtuse to make sweeping statements that will alienate those very effective teachers who teach mathematics in classrooms across England day in, day out. To write in a national newspaper that ‘England is still hobbled by the misplaced idea that teacher instruction is irredeemably boring’ is both wrong and damaging. Many, many thousands of teachers in England are extremely expert in what they do, many, many thousands of teachers use high quality, group instruction on a daily basis as a foundation of their teaching.

Nick goes on to state, ‘Shanghai maths teaching works because it is meticulous. No pupil understanding is left to chance or accident: every step of a lesson is deliberate, purposeful and precise.’ Well, what on earth do you think thousands of us, here in England, have been doing for decades? Our teaching is meticulous, our teaching ensures purposeful lessons.

To make the claim that this sort of practice does not occur in England is simply wrong. Many of us, ignoring trends and fads, have taught effectively in England’s schools for a long time.

Tarring 350,000 maths teachers with the same brush is dangerous and ignorant.

I do, of course, understand why the Minister needs to do this. It is, after all, far easier to make such generalisations than it is to publicly state there are serious structural problems in the teaching profession in England.

There are many people teaching mathematics who do, indeed, deploy ineffective teaching methods. There is a massive requirement for subject specific CPD to help these teachers develop more effective practices.

But is the best way to achieve this to ignore and write off the thousands of effective schools and teachers in England in search of a new silver bullet? I think not.

I wish all of the Shanghai teachers visiting England an enjoyable and enriching experience, I wish all of the teachers who get to interact with them while they are here the same – I hope that the exchange is as successful as the many teacher exchanges over decades that UK teachers have engaged in.

The trouble with the current policy is that is has deliberately and viciously sought to be non-inclusive. Why are we not holding up those schools in England that have cultivated incredibly conducive cultures for schooling? Why ignore the thousands of teachers who have very well developed, evidence based, effective pedagogies?

As I travel the country at the moment, running workshops on mastery models for schooling, I am continually impressed by the teachers I meet. They have theories, they have deep knowledge and they want to engage in the debate. Don’t write them off as flakes or racists, engage with the debate and there can be so much to gain.

MathsConf

I have long known that the answer to improving an education system is to fill it with teachers who are determined to never stop learning. Teachers who are intellects, who question and challenge, teachers who do not accept the words of fools and instead insist on an evidence informed approach to classroom practice.

Professional development has been my obsession for many years now. It is the very reason that I was behind the NCETM, the reason I conceived and founded the charity Teacher Development Trust, the reason that I built this very website.

I have long known that we, as a teaching profession, hold all of the answers. Teachers are all researchers. Each and every hour, a teacher will test hundreds of hypotheses, will make hundreds of predictions, take hundreds of decisions. All teachers have theories, although many do not recognise that they do. The answers are all there, but they are not unlocked or, worse still, they are suppressed, stifled or forbidden. This is why collaboration is the key – we are stronger together. No one teacher can possibly know all there is to know, that is the joy of being a teacher, that there is always something new to learn. Being willing to engage with external others, whether they be the teacher next door or a teacher in another country, is vital. We listen, internalise, contextualise, fit to our pedagogy and our setting and our culture. Collaboration is key.

***

In spring 2004, I was giving a speech at the national AST conference in Leicester, pontificating about the importance of collaboration. As I spoke, a man in the audience stood up and bellowed at me, ‘why don’t you stop talking about it and do something about it!’

He was, of course, dead right.

I drove home and created Emaths. My every free hour then dedicated to creating a one-stop-shop of support for maths teachers and a place for colleagues to share their ideas and resources.

***

Since then, I have had the great privilege to work in education systems all around the world, to learn and to support. I have run national improvement programmes and have been lucky to meet some amazing people from whom I have been able to grow.

At the beginning of the NCETM, I continually argued that teachers were hungry to network and collaborate, but that school leadership (as a whole) was poor and was acting as a blocker. I argued time and again that CPD provision could take place at the weekend and during school holidays as well as during the working week. I argued that large numbers of teachers were fed up of education being London-centric and that events could take place anywhere. But nobody agreed, I was mocked for thinking that teachers would come to Kettering!

I founded and built La Salle Education because the state of maths education CPD and networking is simply not good enough. We are determined to play a part in making things better.

So, in June 2014 we hosted the first MathsConf – on a Saturday, in Kettering! And you came, in your hundreds.

In the past 18 months, we have had the great honour of providing events to over 2000 schools, with the number growing every week.

350,000 people teach mathematics in England every day. The institutional knowledge is immense.

Unlike other events, MathsConf has no party line. I do not choose workshops based on my own ideology or pedagogy. I actively encourage a day of opposing views and contradicting evidence. Because teachers are really bright, they are discerning and they can and do debate a variety of positions. The only goal I have is that MathsConf delegates question all that they hear, challenge each other and then build on the evidence.

I wanted MathsConf to reflect the intelligence of the teachers who come. The events therefore needed to be highly professional in their operation, which my wonderful team has managed superbly in their own time. Education conferences should not be amateur, should not run off schedule, should not patronise.

I am delighted that the events have become so popular and I am humbled by the large number of volunteers who have made it all possible. To be credible, conferences must be relevant and this can only be achieved if the people in the room and the people speaking are current practitioners. MathsConf is attended almost exclusively by current teachers and it is palpable the knowledge that they hold.

I wanted MathsConf to be grown up, to be respectful. That is why we have a festival feel to the events, with fringe activities such as the Tweet Up and informal, fun and friendly additions like the maths cake competition and the treasure hunt.

My complete obsession is to create an opportunity for maths teachers across the country to come together as one, to form supportive friendships so that no teacher must stand alone. I thank, from the bottom of my heart, all those who are helping to make this possible through MathsConf.

MathsConf has cost us dearly. We have lost many thousands of pounds and given up hundreds of hours of our time. I very much appreciate the support of our sponsors, but the funds do not come close to covering the costs. I am happy for this to be the case if each MathsConf moves just one teacher on in their practice, improves just one child’s life. La Salle is committed to continuing to provide these and other events. I hope to see you at MathsConf6 in Peterborough. Booking is open now http://mathsconf.com/

21st Century Learning

The children in our schools today will face a world unknown to us. The careers they will follow, the lives they will lead, and the decisions they will take can’t possibly be imagined.

Schools must prepare children for this new, unimaginable world. We need to ensure our education system is reformed so that it is equipping our children for the future they will face, not the futures that we faced.

Many of the jobs that I have done in my life, many of the decisions I have taken, could not have been predicted by my teachers, were not understood by the society that I grew up in, were not yet invented and were unimaginable. Many of the ways in which I lead my life, such as the use of Twitter or this very blog, are the preserve of this new future that I exist in, unimaginable to the school system of my childhood.

Yet, I have been successful in my career, I am able to make decisions, and I can cope in this unimaginable world of technology.

How on earth did my school manage to prepare me for such a world? And how can we reform our education system of today to ensure that it is readying our children for their future?

This might sound radical, but here is how it is done: make children really bright.

My schooling ensured that I could read and write, ensured that I was mathematically able, ensured that I understood history and could argue and reason, instilled a sense of purpose and hard work, focused exclusively on making me brighter and able to network. Meanwhile, my parents wrapped me in love, imbued in me an everlasting confidence so that I would be able to cope with any change or challenge, instilled in me a drive and determination and a pride in hard work.

It isn’t rocket science. The idea that there is something radical that needs to change in schools is correct, but only insomuch as we need to strip schools back to these core purposes. Head teachers need to be left alone to create institutions focused on creating learn’d young men and women with the confidence to make their way in the world no matter what that world becomes.

Make children really bright. Everything else will follow.

Trying to predict the future and then molding an education system around that prediction is not only doomed to fail (we are awful at predicting the future!) but it is also a foolish starting point. Who cares what the world we become? Why worry about it? Just make children really bright, they will overcome.

Why is it that I am able to communicate through Twitter or write in programming languages that didn’t exist when I was at school? Simple: because I am not a moron. I am educated (in the true sense of the word), which means that I can continue to learn new things and can adapt. My schooling gave me the foundations and knowledge to do so. My parenting gave me the personality and confidence to want to.

So yes, we should reform. We really should. Because between 2001 – 2010 in particular, England deployed an education system hell bent on destroying aspiration and determination. One that believed that only certain types of children from certain types of background should have access to success while the rest would be restricted to a happy-clappy, wrapped in cotton wool experience.

Every single child in every single school should be provided with an education exclusively focused on making them brighter and giving them the ability to network.

Let’s reform education literally. Re form it. Back to a shape when it was about high expectations for all, when it understood that if it didn’t make every child a reader, writer and mathematically literate, then that child would be screwed for life.

Of course, the truth of the whole 21st Century Learning swindle is that, actually, the overwhelming majority of jobs will be exactly the same. But that doesn’t matter either. What matters is that every child leaves school having had the same opportunity of provision (we can’t have opportunity of outcome, that is down to them and parenting).

If we want our children to lead the most successful and happy lives they possibly can, then schools need to re-remember their core purpose: make children really bright.

50 Million

Ok, apologies for the self-congratulatory tone of this blog, but I'm really rather proud of Emaths.

In February 2004, I was giving a speech to a conference of teachers. There I was pontificating on the benefits of collaboration: how we, the 350,000 maths teachers in England are stronger together. That if we could network and share resources and ideas, the system really could improve. I talked about the need for a one-stop-shop, a place where any teacher could add their resources and find support materials.

As the speech went on in my usual evangelical manner, a delegate stood up in yelled – and I mean really yelled – at me "why don't you just do something about it?"

On that stage, in those seconds, my life changed forever.

I drove home that night with his words going round and round my head. He was, of course, right.

So, I started to write Emaths. And on March 4th 2004, the site was launched.

I don't watch my site stats very closely, but this morning I noticed that the number of users was approaching a pretty significant number and knew that it would tip over that number at some point today. And it did.

50 million users.

At some stage this afternoon, the 50 millionth user of Emaths did some maths or found some support or used some material.

Emaths has been a labour of love over the past decade – though it looks after itself nowadays (except for the funding required!).

I am proud of what the site has achieved. I created, designed and wrote Emaths from scratch, by myself. No grants, no government funding, no corporate money. Just me, at home trying to find a solution to that heckle all those years ago. And then, of course, all those teachers who have been generous enough to share their approaches on the site.

50 millions users. I am proud that I have played a part in the education of many millions of children and proud that the site continues to do so.

Emaths has drained my wallet and has driven me to the edge over the years – those nights of working on the site at 4am when I had to be up for school in the morning!

For over a decade now, my every waking moment has been filled with the obsession to 'do something about it'. I am absolutely sure that the answer lies in large scale collaboration, that every single teacher of mathematics can benefit from the knowledge and skills of every other teacher. Bringing these teachers together, creating a 'social brain' of all our experiences and knowledge is what continues to drive me. I have tried several possible solutions, Emaths being the first (and like the first born, has a special place in my heart). Other attempts have included the NCETM and 'wiki-curriculum' in Canada. Today, after much experimenting and research and pain and tears and success and failure, all of the wisdom is being rolled into my last hurrah, Complete Mathematics – never before have we created something so powerful and never before have I felt we are so close to realising the vision I had on that stage in 2004.

For now though, for today, I'm going to spend a few hours thinking about my beloved Emaths and all that it has achieved. I hope that the site has helped you over the years and, if you have one to hand, would like you to raise a glass to the old girl.

So, excuse the self-indulgent blog, but I think that 50 million is worth celebrating and am proud that Emaths will continue to give free of charge support for many years to come.

Some Things I Would Change

Just a random stream of thoughts as I sit in a cold railway station trying to get home...

Primary curriculum

• Scrap current curriculum
• Primary maths to be solely concerned with

1. Numerosity / Number sense
2. Place Value
3. Base 10 System
4. Arithmetic
5. Proportional Reasoning
Each of these 'primary domains' is effectively infinite and can be studied to post-degree level! A minimum standard in each domain to be set, which every child must attain. However, those children who become secure with these domains at the minimum standard continue their learning in each domain to as high a level as appropriate.

Primary teaching

• Scrap the structure of one teacher teaching multiple subjects. Mathematics to be taught by maths specialist teacher (these can be drawn from existing workforce, with the appropriate support to ensure they become specialists – primary teachers would be given a lead-in of 5 years to choose and up-skill their new specialist subject)
• Improve subject specific pedagogy of those teaching mathematics with extensive support to ensure understanding of concrete-pictorial-abstract, multiple representations of problems and solutions, and connectionist approaches.
• Scrap teaching assistants and direct funding to special schools
• Scrap learning walks, lesson observations and SMT inspections
• All teachers must be part of a professional learning network, undertaking continual teacher enquiry / lesson study

Secondary curriculum

• Complete removal of probability and statistics from the mathematics curriculum
• The formation of two new subjects; Pure Mathematics and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics compulsory for all students aged 11 – 18
• Statistics optional to all students aged 11 – 18
• Pure Mathematics builds on the foundations of the five 'primary domains'
• Raise the bar for the Pure Mathematics qualification at aged 16 by introducing basic calculus as a requirement for all by end of KS4
• Emphasis on mathematical modeling, increasing year on year
• Complete ban on 'conveyer belt' curriculum models
• Scrap homework and replace with 'prep' – all schools to have provision for 'prep' classes after hours

Secondary Schools

• All secondary schools to have a dedicated 'primary domains' provision – any child who arrives at secondary school without the minimum standard in the five primary domains does not begin studying Pure Mathematics, instead they attend the provision and then join a Pure Mathematics course one year late (if they have secured the five domains) in a year 7 class.
• Reopen the 1000 special schools closed in the late 1990s (you can read why on my blog "Inclusion is a Misnomer")
• Scrap teaching assistants and direct funding to special schools
• Scrap learning walks, lesson observations and SMT inspections
• All teachers must be part of a professional learning network, undertaking continual teacher enquiry / lesson study

The Workforce: New Entrants

• Employ really bright people
• The schools minister, Nick Gibb, said in 2010: "I would rather have a physics graduate from Oxbridge without a PGCE teaching in a school than a physics graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE". Interesting, considering he didn't go to Oxbridge, but the general gist of raising the aspiration that teaching becomes a profession welcoming of great intellects is one I agree with. However, subject knowledge is utterly useless without subject specific pedagogical knowledge and skill. ITE courses should only attract funding if they robustly address subject specific pedagogy, but being a teacher does not necessarily require QTS – it is foolish to have such a blanket rule (particularly when much of that provision is poor quality)
• Wherever possible employ those who have had a career prior to teacher training (fill schools with those who can talk eloquently about working as a mathematician, engineer, etc). We desperately need people standing in front of maths classrooms who can speak to students about why the are a mathematician and what that means
• Require all teachers to gain a master's degree with focus on mathematics specific content knowledge and mathematics specific pedagogy within first 5 years of teaching
• Every teacher to be linked to at least one research partner from a different school or HEI for the duration of their career

The Workforce: Existing Teachers

• Fundamental to what I believe is that the 350,000 people who teach maths in England's schools each and every day are good people who want the best. I have almost never met a teacher who goes to work wanting to give their students a crap experience.
• National recognition of the expertise of this group of people
• Those who do not already hold at least a masters degree, to do so within 5 years (again the focus must be on mathematics specific content knowledge and mathematics specific pedagogy).

School Management

• Every SMT to contain at least one maths specialist with a deep understanding of mathematics specific content knowledge and mathematics specific pedagogy.
• Drastically raise the bar for entrance to headship – scrap NPQH and replace be demands on proven track record of teaching expertise and a demonstrable level of intellect, so that headteachers are first and foremost leading, with intellect, teaching. Remove all of the business management functions from head teachers, with each school having a COO, preferably drawn from successful experience in the private sector. Fundamentally, a head teacher should be a figurehead who commands the respect of the teaching workforce because they themselves are incredibly successful teachers. Wherever possible, head teachers should hold doctorate level qualification, with emphasis on planning, carrying out and evaluating education focused research. A 10 year lead in to achieve this.
• All head teachers to linked to at least 10 other head teachers in an enquiry / research group. Each critique and support each other. Held jointly responsible for standards across their institutions

School Inspection

• Scrap Ofsted
• Only maths specialists have any place in inspecting maths provision
• Inspection to be concerned with the output and not to take a view on the how and why of approaches. This can be largely a data exercise
• Other forms of inspection to be scrapped. Replace with national programme of teacher enquiry. Each teacher to work with the research partner(s) over the course of their careers in a continuing spiral or enquiry – all teachers theorise, test, evaluate, publish every academic year. As the research partner of a teacher in a different school, their role is to challenge, test, support and learn from their colleague.

Department for Education

• Wherever possible, SoS to serve full term and be held to account for delivering the mandate the electorate gave them (rather than going off on a personal crusade)
• Wherever possible (though not always easy from a pool of just 650 people), SoS to be a towering intellect
• DfE to be concerned solely with the output of the education system and to leave the how and why to those who actually know what they are doing
• Complete autonomy to be devolved to head teachers and their local communities, but this to be hand-in-hand with complete accountability, with the local community able to remove head teachers where school performance is not good enough