Episode 192: Why change something that is already working? Assistant head teacher and specialist education leader reveals all

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Hi, I'm Robin Potter.

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

This is The School of School podcast. Welcome to the School of School podcast.

Welcome back, Andy and Robin. How are you both today?

I'm fine, I'm good. I'm good. I'm not going to answer for everyone this time. That's what I normally do. I'll say everyone's good. Move on.

Well, I appreciate it's always positive, Andy, because you say I'm good and you assume that we're all good and I am good so-

Well listen-

...thanks.

...this is excellent news, but you are not the only two who are joining us today or the only two people. Matt Bland, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. How's things?

Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm doing very well. It's a lovely Wednesday and yeah, life is all good over here, so yeah, it's really good.

Wonderful. That's possibly the lightest introduction I've ever given. I've just used your name. So you're an assistant head teacher at Our Lady's Bishop Eton. I believe that to be true, in Liverpool. You're a specialist leader in education. You've done all sorts, but rather than me going through an extensive list about you, Matt, can you tell us a little bit more just about you generally in the school you work in?

Yeah, so like I said, I'm a teacher here, I'm a teacher and an assistant head here at Our Lady's Bishop Eton. I've been here for about 10 years, which kind of coincides with when the school picked up Maths — No Problem! And I suppose 2014 there was a lot of big change going on in education, especially after different Ofsted reviews and new curriculums coming out. So I chimed in with the school and when they were going through their journey. Before that, I taught in quite a few places actually. I went to university down in Brighton and I was teaching around East Grinstead and then I moved on and taught out in Cyprus with some army schools. At the time it was Children's Services education, so teaching the children of Army, Army personnel really. Then I met my wife out there and we moved back to Liverpool really, and that's the whole circle completed really, and back to here.

That's good. That's succinct. That is a nice wee package to give us an introduction into what you do and how you go about your business. Man, it's fantastic. Well, it's a pleasure having you on board. I suppose we just want to hear a bit of a story really and the story of what you've done in your school. Maybe starting from that 2014, you've given us a bit of an insight as to what led to you to be back in Liverpool, but maybe just give us a bit of an insight as to how you've gone, it's 10 years, hence, and so just having a chance to reflect on those 10 years.

Yeah, it's interesting really, we've got, like I said, there's a bit of change going on in our school, so because of that, you are reflecting back on your process and having just had Ofsted, again, it's that time to constantly reflect back. But 2014, for those older teachers that remember all that stuff and who were about, I qualified about 2003. So I saw the curriculum before that and it was very different. And when that new curriculum came out or it was introduced that we should be doing a mastery style curriculum for mathematics, I think I'd certainly remember lots of the local schools didn't really know what that meant. I think the government introduced it, although they had a good idea having seen from other countries what it looked like. I don't think a lot of schools did. And it took a while for that to filter down.

And then our head teacher at the time had heard about this new way, I suppose it was that the Maths — No Problem! or at the time lots of people were calling it Singapore Maths. I know that it's just good maths, but at the time, that's what they were calling it, that Singaporean way. And I got the job at the same time at the school and it fell perfectly with me really, it echoed a lot of how I teach, I suppose, which is why it kind of naturally resonated with me. It was something that the school wanted to investigate. What was, I mean, this is probably something I've said certainly to Andy and Robin when you came and visited me was our school is in what I'd say is leafy suburbs for Liverpool. It's in quite an affluent area, but I suppose we'd say very middle class, but has lots of aspiration and attainment and higher attainment within our school.

So prior to doing Maths — No Problem!, and what was our own curriculum, our children did very well. In fact, I remember when I first came here at the time, children were doing GCSE maths and were getting GCSE results in that. And then so our results were very high so the big question for us was why would we change? Why wouldn't we just keep what we're doing and keep on going? Because that's always worked and it was working. And then one of the drivers for change, I suppose, and was that when we started talking to particularly girls, the girls coming back, as you see old students come back and you go, "How are you doing? It's lovely to see you, what you're doing now and what you're going to be going on to and what a levels are you doing?" And when we talked to them, none of them were choosing Maths.

None of them were saying, "Maths, it was one of the things." Now that's absolutely fine. I've got no problem with you having interests other than Maths. I'm not someone that you have to do Maths. But our opinion was that actually, "You guys, you left us with a GCSE in Maths, your trajectory or your path should have been complete the GCSE in Maths to go to further Maths and potentially onto other things." And we always said, "I don't mind that you don't do Maths, but it should be an option. You shouldn't get to A-level or get to degree-level and say, 'That's not for me anymore. I don't want to do that,' or, 'I can't do that anymore,' and that shouldn't be an option. It's fine to have other interests, but I want maths to be one of those options." And that kind of, although we were getting good results, what triggered us was thinking, this isn't really working for the children.

This is part of our job is to see what life skills are we embedding within you? What are we giving you that you are going to go on? We are just one stepping stone in your journey. We are not the end of your journey, year six. So that kind of made us think really, and that's probably what made us research and it's certainly what made our head teacher research and then this methodology came through and that made us think, well, actually we should look into this. And then we had some really good training and we really invested in that and so on and so forth really. That started us off to look at it and it just fell at the perfect time for me really. Then what was interesting, we have just been Ofsteded, the last week of July.

What was very lovely was at the time, because it was the last week of July, we had lots of work exchange children come in from schools and actually it's predominantly girls. And I did say to every one of them with an Ofsted inspector nearby, "What are you planning to do for your A-levels? What are you doing?" And without prompting, and it was a wonderful moment for me. All of them said, "Yeah, I'm thinking about doing maths. I'm going to do maths for A-level." And that is very anecdotal and it's not perfect. It's not perfect research, but actually that was a difference from what was 10 years ago. And it's nice to see that circle just come back on itself really.

I mean, that must have warmed your heart.

It is very good. And it's quite nice because talking to one of our governors, actually her child was in the first cohort or first batch that we did, and she was one of the girls in there and actually was saying, "Yeah," and that's all we ever wanted it to be an option. It should be a viable option that you can do that gives you a career path. And I think that's something that should happen.

And it's important that long-term view, it's saying, okay, it's not just about us being able to generate good results that makes our school look good, but then forget about what happens when the children leave. It's having that long-term views, what happens, what's the long-term journey and how are we-

As a primary school sometimes it's quite capping. You only see the first part of their journey. You don't see where that goes and you forget it sometimes and you don't need to. It's still part of that journey, and that's got to be the driving force. It's got to be the goal of what you're doing really. And it's too easy to forget sometimes, really.

So Matt, what's different for the children? Why do they decide to continue with Maths?

It's hard to say. I mean, I haven't done lots of interviews on that one, but we think, and it's the same thing we were told at the very start, if you want them to go high, you've got to build those deep foundations. And it's that, I think there's two aspects to that. The first one would be concentrating on those foundations and really starting off slowly and building up from there. And the second part would be the fact that you are looking at problem-solvings every day, so problem solving and solving problems. That's the bit that separates out from just general number work.

It struck me like a hundred years ago, I went to a factory nearby and there's a mill nearby and one person could add up and take away. He then became the accountant and that's all he needed to do was add up and take away very quickly and very fast. And he became middle class and well paid for it. But a calculator does all that stuff. And what's different for our children? What do we want them to be in a world that they're going to go into in about in 10, 15 years time? What's that going to look like? And problem-solving is going to be at the heart of that.

We've been talking about this for a long time, but that's an interesting thing to think about. People always say, "Well, you've got to prepare children for the future," but maybe for the first time ever, the changes that are going to happen are not just, they're not just incremental changes like a faster internet connection or a safer car. Things are going to change radically. People aren't going to be driving cars, factories aren't going to be full of people on assembly lines. A lot of stuff is going to be automated. I'm sure all industries are going to be effected, farming, everything. Just think about anything that can be mechanised is going to become mechanised and a lot of knowledge work is well, is going to become automated. So we're at the forefront right now of artificial intelligence. We could see the effect that it's having. It's growing so rapidly right now.

It's a tool that a lot of people are already using extensively. I know I use it all the time for all sorts of things. The world's going to be so different, it's going to be so different. It already is so different. So what is it that we need people to be able to do? And the only answer for that is we just need people who can think clearly and logically so that they don't get taken in. There's threats from artificial intelligence of when you look at how social media works and the algorithms that are running your attention and all those kinds of things, it's so easy to fall trapped to these things. You need people to have clear thinking to see their way through all this. And I don't think there's anything that teaches logic and clear thinking like mathematics, and that's really what is what we're trying to do. It's the problem-solving at the heart of all those things so-

It is, and a bit of analytical thinking, isn't it? You've got to be able to analyse that and evaluate your methods and how you're viewing things. And that plays into lots of other subjects. But you're right, that ability to look at it and then also a bit reflective thinking as well, coming back to it and thinking how you processed that and how you did it.

Yeah.

So I'm kind of curious, Matt, how was the implementation moving from one to the other with the teachers? And I've asked this of other podcast guests because I think that's always a bit of the challenge is getting everyone on board for change. Did you find that?

We did at first. People were, it's just not knowing, isn't it? And there is certainly back in, like I say, looking back to 2014 when we started this whole movement through people were, I don't think people knew a lot about it. They didn't really have the research background to it. They had that stereotypical image of, "Well, I know how they get the results. They get it through lots of repetition, loads of homework and doing it all night and all morning and only ever studying." And part of that was breaking that, so you had to think about that. But we did invest heavily in training. Heavily in training.

So we rolled out the programme, we didn't do it as a, we didn't say, "All year groups are going to stop doing what they're doing and then move on to this." What we did is we started off with 1, 2, 3. At first it was just those year groups first, and then we rolled it out with them. So we started that in the October, November of, I think it was 2014. And everybody, once we'd had the training, people got really involved in, and the training was very good. And it was Andy Ash and Mark Cotton had trained us. I don't know if that they've had nothing to do with-

We know those names.

...those speakers. But they did a lot of our training and it was fantastic and it really got us into it. And then we became very enthused by it. And then what was very good is we started that process of coaching as well. I read some research and it's something that's really impacted my view and how we change in schools is to change anyone's teaching strategy or anyone's teaching or to change any teacher's way of doing something roughly, I think there was a piece of American research said you need 36 hours of CPD. That's a lot of time. But actually-

Did you hear that Adam?

You start adding, yeah, but if you really want to embed change and change practise, you've got to invest in that training process. What we did was it was obviously a three-day course, so already there you're adding up about 18 hours of training then. And then we also had things like coaching sessions with between year groups and they also had teachers come over and coach us and we then went to their schools and watch them and did lesson observations. And once you start adding up all those little bits of lesson observations and bits of coaching, actually you get very close to it. And if you did that over time, and we did that over the year, so much so that the rest of the school from years four, five and six, six didn't want to do it straight away.

They were still a bit nervous. And I can see why at the time there was levels and lots of things resting on SATS, but four and five started doing Maths — No Problem! earlier than we were expecting to them to start. We were expecting them to go through the rest of their year and start in the September, but they wanted to start it by Easter. They went through that process and they started it. And very lucky at the time, the head really invested in it. She really did put a lot of time and effort into the Maths — No Problem! curriculum and the training scheme. And once that came through, the snowball had got too big. Anyone who was against it was too big and everyone was doing it. But actually we didn't really find many people against it. People were involved and people liked it. And then from that year five, the next, sorry, year six took over and then they took it on.

And what was interesting was our results didn't dip. In fact, we had a slight up peak, it went up slightly, and we've stayed very consistent. So our results have stayed very high and very consistent and have been consistent for roughly 10 years. But they didn't dip. And where people thought, "Oh, I'm starting this halfway through the year, my results will dip it." It didn't. It was okay. And yeah, that was our journey. That was our whole process. It's a long time ago now, and then I got involved with it. I wanted to be a little bit more, I could see that this is quite good. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed how I was teaching. And then so I became an SLE. At the time they were running it, we were a teaching school and I went to a lot of training by Maths — No Problem! And I looked into some other local training and did all that stuff and from that I became an SLE. And as a teaching school, we ran down those lines. So that led onto the next phase, I suppose, for us.

That's a fascinating story.

Yeah, I was just going to say, just listening to you talk, I think one of the big things, just from what you've said, you've said quite a few things that I'd love to pick up on, but one of them, over the 10 years, I think one of the biggest shifts that I've seen is the recognition that actually yes, we do need training and maths teaching, because I think that prior to that, there was a general sense that if you could do primary school maths, you could teach it. I think that existed in that time. And again, like you talked about the reason why you chose to do Maths — No Problem! in 2014, funnily enough, I was a head teacher at the same time. It was exactly the reason why I had a colleague got a good friend and colleague in the secondary school up the road, same thing, great results.

But I felt we weren't creating mathematicians. That was my prompt, but exactly the same as what you're talking about. But I think that's the thing. I think that over the last 10 years people realise it's a really sophisticated business teaching, teaching and learning mathematics. So I think the realisation over the last decade has been that number of hours that you're talking about or a dedicated and a really clear idea about what the professional development looks like for mathematics. Teaching is an absolute necessity. It's not like, "Wouldn't it be nice?" And I think that there's a radical really big shift over the last 10 years to accept that. I still think some people are coming on board, but I can't... It just becomes clearer to me the importance of it almost daily.

When I talk to those schools, I do hear from schools that did it the same model as us. We were one of about five schools in Liverpool that at the same time got trained and they did it the same way as us, which was, and it was successful. It became very embedded. And then I hear from other schools quite locally who once becoming an accredited school reached out and talked to us and said how they did it. They didn't quite have that same approach that you talked about, Adam. And there's where they definitely found more bumps in the road. They definitely found that it didn't become embedded. They were fighting that. They were fighting those kind of logistical battles. They were fighting those training battles, those skill battles that they didn't have. And then it starts to not do as well as starts to not...starts to fail really.

And then you just push your water uphill a little bit, aren't you? And school's busy enough, school's got enough problems to solve. You've got enough issues to go along with your daily grind along with all the other subjects to then add another battle. It becomes very difficult, especially you've got external pressures, you've got parents and all those things. It is about investing and like any subject, when you invest in it, you do see benefits. That rising tide does raise everybody up.

And I think that that's the thing. It's also benefits, not just specific to maths. I mean, I don't think I've heard any school that hasn't said that when they start doing the training, it hasn't had a really profound impact on all subjects because it's just, it's the pedagogy that underpins it as sound.

Yeah. So when we then 2019 when the government wanted people to look at the foundation subjects, I suppose when Ofsted criteria changed a bit, we took maths as our, by then it was very embedded. So every single class was doing it. The children only knew it as maths. They didn't know it as Singapore maths anyway. It was just maths. This is what we do. And they didn't even know it as Maths — No Problem! It's just maths. It's what we do and it's our curriculum. But we use that as our model to say, "Well, this is what we like and this is what we want to see in other subjects, history, geography. We want to see these elements as well. So we want to have maybe, is it possible to have a concrete element in history? So is it possible to start with or have some artefacts to look at or in the geographies, how can we get some of those, that CPA approach into it so children could understand what it is they're looking at?" And it kind of influenced a lot of it, really, and a lot of our thinking.

Hate to put you on the spot, but I'm going to. So you've talked about the importance of CPD for implementation. You've talked about problem solving as a important skill. Any other takeaways? If a school was coming to visit you looking to implement Maths — No Problem!, what would be the other piece? Or would there be anything else that you would tell them, "Yes, this you must do?"

For me the must, the things that we say are a must happen in our school is you must have some manipulatives in every lesson. So one thing that we want to see in every single lesson, no matter what age I walk into, so if I go from reception to year six on a learning walk, I am expecting to see everybody have some manipulatives out, something concrete that they are doing that relates to whatever the problem is that the Maths — No Problem! curriculum is presenting. So they must have a look at that and I must see that within the lesson. And then from that it would be following that, the process of the lesson.

And then it is, I think it is always nice to have those textbooks to then look back and read that book. What is it saying? And I think it was either a training or somebody else. If you want children to be good writers, well they've got to read lots of books and have a varied diet. It's the same with the textbooks or maths. They've got to have that maths diet of reading. They've got to be able to see what does it look like, how does it present?

Thank you for joining us on The School of School podcast.