Episode 200: We want a piece of this, this is too good to miss! — 10 Years on, this School shares their incredible journey

Welcome back. It's another School of School podcast episode. Robin, only one, only half the usual getting here. How are you this morning? I'm not sure. Yeah. Yep. So that's what's happened. How are you?

Robin (00:09.2)

What's happened? He's on a plane somewhere. He's leaving on a jet plane. I'm great. Yes, I'm great. Sun is shining. Day has begun. Love it.

Wonderful. And more than making up for Andy's absence, we've got Neil and Rosie from St. Bridget's on the Wirral. How are you both?

Fine, not so sunny in the Whirral, but it's a reasonably pleasant day.

It was a gorgeous autumnal day today. Wasn't it cold, but sort of clear skies. I'm not a million miles away from the two of you. Look, for those of you that have not met Neil and Rosie before, can you both just sort of take turns introducing yourself and maybe giving us little insight into your school and then we can sort of start to get into the journey that you've taken with Maths — No Problem!

Yeah, so my name's Neil Laferve. I am the head teacher of St. Bridget's Primary School. This is my second headship.

previously I've also been a head teacher in another school in West Kirby and I've also worked across England. I started my education in inner London and working in Wandsworth and working in some really amazing inner city schools but then life took me up to the north west where I live with my family and currently enjoying being the head teacher for the last 15 years at St. Bridget's. So a long

A long serving head teacher and finally enjoying it a little bit more than usual.

Good things come to those who wait,

It's been hard fought.

Yeah, yeah. What about you, Rosie?

Okay, so I'm Rosie Ross and I've...

teaching for a very very long time going into my 30th year of teaching. Unlike Neil I've always been based in the north west I've been at St. Bridget's for about six years now, maths subject lead and Assistant Head more recently and I've taught you know in schools in Liverpool and across Wirral as well and you know maths has always been my passion I've been very very lucky to lead maths in several different schools and settings so you know it's what I'm really passionate about.

Yeah, and actually I'm a Northwester too, so I feel I'm good company. You've both done huge amounts, not just the roles that you have in school, outside of school, and you've introduced so many programs to your school, which I'm sure that your children and staff and community benefit from massively. Can you just tell us a little bit about the journey that you took, probably right from the outset with Maths — No Problem!? Why take the journey?

Yeah, I think I was trying to work it out today. I think it was about 10 years ago. I was speaking to a fellow head teacher and they suggested I have a look at sort of the maths no problem scheme and just sort of talked about some of the benefits and St. Bridget's has always been a reasonably high attaining school.

The children were sort of reasonably good mathematicians but they weren't really enjoying maths. It was just a subject that they had to do and they had to get through and as an educator that just didn't sit right with me. from discussion with how maths and problem was developed, know, with some of its roots in sort of Singapore and sort of understanding some of the great work that had been happening

I think probably one of the quotes that still stays with me was my colleague said it seems that and it sort of suggested that children in Singapore take maths A level because it's the easy one. And I was like good grief, my daughter at the time couldn't wait to give up maths after GCSE and I was just thinking right well there's a whole culture I need to understand because that's sort of what I want for my children in my school.

You know if it helps with you know data and results great But actually I want them to have a love of what is maths and a mathematical language and something that's like a critical skill for life So we started that journey ten years, ten years ago and we were had the luxury of time to Ousted weren't coming to us We've been previously great outstanding. So we knew we had a little bit of time to sort of embed things rather than have to to rush stuff

which was really important for us because it meant we could be brave and we could make mistakes and work out what that was like. Very sensibly as a head teacher, I decided I'd grow organically, I bought all the resources, but we only had training for years one or two. My staff had other ideas because when the Key Stage 2 staff started speaking to Key Stage 1 staff, they were like, hey, we want a piece of this. This is too good to miss. Neil, we don't care about training. We'll get the training later.

let's start talking about this, let's start getting this into our classes. This is different from what we've had before. So we then unloaded this massive pallet and shipped it to all the classes. And at that time, my deputy Ryan Neal was our maths lead and he was starting to go into classes and starting to spread that word of what mastery looked like. You know, if I talk in simple terms of what English maths was like, you I had to guess what was in the teacher.

head in order to get the correct answer then correct it multiple times and repeat it multiple times. This was a whole different approach that we had to start sort of understanding and working out what that meant for us. So we then started that process and we noticed two things. One was children started talking about maths in a much more interesting way and the second thing was my staff started talking about maths in a way that was more fascinating.

They weren't so worried anymore about planning. were more interested in how will these lessons fit with my class? What are the bear pits? I steal a word that Rosie uses. What are the bare pits that my class might stumble over when we're talking about this maths and tomorrow's lesson, for example? And that was really where we went. Now, I'll let Rosie speak in a minute, but one of the bits that we really

learned from sort of the conferences of maths, the problem was this is not a one-year fix. This is and so when I went to my governors, I said this is five years. But from you know from what Ban Har was saying teachers in Singapore they their mastery journey is a minimum of five years and in that time it has to be revisited. So I said let's be brave this is the time scale we're looking at. So for five years maths mastery

was the number one thing on our school development plan. But what was interesting was every year it was different because we were coming at it from a different base and every year we built on it. And then of course, when we had new teachers, had to put that in mind that actually they're on their five-year journey again. And so now we're 10 years down the road, we're just revisiting that and talking about those things. So we had some...

visiting teachers come to our school yesterday. And one of the things that I have to warn them about is, the language of your maths is so embedded. This seems so good. We really noticed this about journaling. said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a 10 year journey. And don't think all of this happened day one. Sometimes it was a little bit interesting, dare I say even a mess.

that's about being brave as a leader and making sure you work on that mastery. And I'll hand over to Rosie because I'm sure she has something to add to that.

And sorry, just, I'm still caught up with bear pits. That's just sitting in my head. You know, being Canadian, I'm like, what the heck? You're using bear pits in a classroom. aside from that, so Rosie, did you start this journey with Neil at the beginning?

No, so I was actually, I was really fortunate because I was in another school at the time, another school in Wirral and my introduction to Maths — No Problem! also came 10 years ago and I went to the same conference that Neil is talking about with Ban Har in Wirral and I knew Ryan, who was the deputy and subject lead here at the time and I remember the two of us just listening to Ban Har and going, my goodness, it was like...

I think it was the light bulb moment of my teaching career because I was also looking as a year six teacher at the time, I was looking for something to get me out of the drudgery of boosting and how am I going to get these kids over the line and this is just grim. And it was just a light bulb moment. And I remember going back to my own school and say, we have to do this. We can't not do this for our children. This is what maths should look like. And I think the big thing for me as well,

Looking back I think...

The work that we started to do through Maths — No Problem! was probably a pivotal moment in terms of my career in getting into other people's schools. think there was, wasn't just that we started to take on board Maths — No Problem!. We suddenly were opening up the schools. So Ryan and I started to do a lot of work in each of the schools, but more importantly in each other's classrooms. And that was a really massive change, a change in culture across schools, across how schools work with each other.

And I think from my sort of start on that journey from 10 years, that's probably the biggest take that I've had from it. It's the amount of time I've spent because of working with the Maths — No Problem! in other people's classrooms, just purely looking at what does maths look like in the classroom? How do we craft these lessons? So I think for me, that was being a really significant part of the journey.

I want to pick up on two parts and they're kind of intertwined. So deal with them as you wish. But I think that there's a couple of things that I want to pick up on. One is around in going on this journey. I just wonder the empowerment comes in part from a better understanding of mathematics. Like you were saying, Neil, about your staff learning. And then I just wonder the second thing is just understanding

a pedagogical approach that's not unique to mathematics. And so in doing both, I just wonder if there's, you do observe, there's a sort of double whammy is that one, we realize that actually our mathematical understanding in terms of teaching it, not doing it, which I think is a very big shift, certainly from when I first started teaching, the adage was, Robin said this before, if you can do maths, you can teach it.

because it was about sort of finding out that there's a big shift, like teaching mathematics is significantly more difficult than doing primary school maths. We should be good at that. You know, we're growing up, so we've had a go at primary. But I was wondering if either of those two things resonate in terms of just that empowerment, because you have good subject knowledge, the more that you teach it and learn it through the programme, but also that sort of pedagogical part that...

Again, it's that reflection on practice that can start to go into lots of different areas.

For us, I suppose, it was just a starting point that we realized what we were missing and the Maths — No Problem! approach started to guide us in a way that was different to other schemes and different to other approaches in that previously, we won't name any schemes, but previously those arrived at the door, they were shipped out, this will be the way, this will improve maths.

actually no there's a whole conversation around that and it was a more involved conversation it's like okay right this this is what we've got how are we delivering this

reflecting on what Ban Har was talking about. So there was a whole network of support ready for us in a way that there wasn't before. So as a leader, I was able to engage with that and see, right, these are my motivations in terms and this is how I can guide my staff. And then my staff were able to say, actually, OK, let's start talking about ourselves as being maths subject teachers, not just delivering that.

and starting really small. what we then found was, OK, right, well, let's start a mastery approach. And the elemental levels were we weren't very good at it, but we had the bravery to sort of go, right, let's stick at it. What does this look like and what's the conversation? And for the first time when we started this, the biggest things I said before was we started talking about maths more regularly. I'd walk into the staff room and it wasn't being put on.

It's just like people, did you do this? Did you do this? I found this. We need these counters, these counters. Suddenly we're talking about resourcing, precise resourcing. We're talking about what is the language that we need. And we've gone through sort of several sort of iterations of what mastery means to us. So after the first year, it was about journaling. And we talked about multiple ways of recording that method one, method two, method three. And then we realized that, that was part of mastery, but actually

it depended on what you were journaling. Sometimes that just didn't work. So we talked about journaling in a really serious way. And then when we felt we'd got a handle on that, we suddenly start talking about, right, actually, I don't think we're really getting precision in the vocabulary we're using with children. And we're not using that in a really significant way. So then that became a focus for us as well. So each of these was part of a mastery. And that affected our pedagogical approach as well.

Rosie, I don't know you want to add to that.

Yeah, because I think, I mean, I think it's worked, isn't it? Is it deborable? And she talks about actually to be that really effective maths teacher, you have to have that specialised content knowledge. You also have to have that knowledge of teaching. You have to have that knowledge of teaching maths as well. The level of depth that you have to go to. So I think the difference, I think, in terms of teaching maths for all our teachers has been

That absolute realization I have got to really know my stuff But that's really frightening unless you've got something to help you know your stuff

And I think what it gave us with the textbooks it gave us something to think actually there's a deliberacy here. There's a deliberacy behind the representations in in you the textbook there's a deliberacy in the you know in in that really careful

changes in the types of resourcing that we're being asked to use. There's a deliberacy in the language. And I think what was lovely to see is when the NCETM brought out their professional development documents, I remember looking at my Maths — New Problem textbook, looking at the NCETM professional development documents and going, my goodness, that's why it's an accredited textbook. Because it literally was doing everything the NCETM was saying. This is the spiral curriculum. This is, you know, this intelligence

you know adaptations and just that intelligent just changing things little bit by little so I think it kind of puts a responsibility on us as teachers because we realized actually we don't just have to be able to do the maths we have to understand the journey of the maths we have to know how to unpack the maths and that's where those conversations happened that's where we started to get in and out of each other's classrooms because that responsibility was there and then you said about had it sort of in terms of a pedagogical approach

It very much has affected the way we teach in a very positive way across school. think, you know, one of the first things that we noticed was actually that level of subject knowledge. We took that into say our grammar lessons. We looked at actually our grammar lessons not as a standalone type of lesson, but actually we need to unpack this. We need to unpack why, why is the structure of writing this way? How does that feed through other areas of writing? It's now across every curriculum area.

our history and in terms of the responsibility for subject knowledge. I think as a teacher, since I've been teaching in the maths, you know, through Maths — No Problem!, really thought about subject knowledge, the pedagogy behind that teaching, you know, I know in terms of my history lessons, the research, you know, the subject knowledge that I try and bring to those lessons and also the not overloading students. I think that's been something else that's come out of it. We've really stripped down what's the thing in each lesson.

not just in maths but in every single lesson what is the thing and how are we going to get that thing to our children what's the tiny steps in progression and that's had a really positive impact across our whole curriculum.

I think too, one of the other things that is really obvious to me, that's the other ingredient that you've touched on, but I have absolutely no doubt that a phenomenal amount of work has gone into it, which is the fact that teachers were allowed to make mistakes, that they trusted you. Because clearly, if you've gone to government and said, we've got a five-year plan, this isn't one of those things that we've all seen in schools where it's like, right, this is new overnight.

tomorrow you're going to be assessed on it and you're going to be held accountable by the end of the week. You know, like some of these things. And I just think that the environment that you clearly created, keeping in mind that I think something really important as well is that we didn't used to have the conversations about the teaching of mathematics. I have been in a lot of classrooms and prior to these shifts, it just simply wasn't talked about. was just like a thing that everyone did. So I think that

creating that environment, which you clearly did, where people could talk about it. I know some of that will be organic, but I would also suggest that a decent chunk of it will be because they felt that they were empowered to do so. I suspect that'll be the case.

And early days as well, it was challenging because some of my governors had children in school and there was a change in the way of working. So previously, children who thought they were good at maths were actually just really good at calculation and sort like a vertical way of sort of thinking, yeah, I can do more and more of this. Whereas the mastering maths broadened that challenge and presented problems that needed more sort of exploring in lateral way. And one of my governors said, look, my child used to be good at maths.

now this new maths no problem stuff's come in, that they don't feel they're so good at maths anymore. I said, whoa, whoa, I said, what we're doing is, and I explained it, a month later she comes back, yeah, now I get it. I get what you were doing. And my son is good at maths, but he's now exploring it in a deeper way. And so it was really interesting having some of those sort of slightly challenging conversations. And then, you know,

progressing on is we can talk a bit more about sort of like sort of professional learning culture, but we felt Rosie and I from observation.

making sure things don't drop off. So you always get that early buy-in and then you come back to the second year and then the third year. And I've noticed that some of my colleagues in other schools, that's a very challenging moment because particularly if data is not quite in the right place and things like that, then there can be a bit of a panic. But it's actually, no, if we are teaching this right, if we are developing the right culture, the data comes by.

comes in the end, but you just have to sort of grit it out a little bit because actually the children's mathematics knowledge goes well. I think sometimes that there can be a drop off because you just think it that that

professional learning that discussion ebbs away and we have you have to as leaders keep on reinvigorating that and thinking about that. For us, you know, one of the tangible things has been we decided that the children's journals, particularly now they're used to journaling, are things they really pride themselves on. The work that goes into the year six journals is something, you know, it's really a thing of beauty, know, particularly if you're

mathematician. But when they finished those books, whereas before we'd put them into the dark cupboard never to be returned again until the end of the year when you pass them back, we now sellotape them together because we find that children are looking back through their work to review some of their learning to, know, if they're asked a question from a previous topic. And that has been a really fascinating because there's been massive ownership of their work and massive pride, which we've never seen before.

Incredible. We have so much to unpack here. There's I mean you've you've given us a really great overview of the journey so far and it's been ten years. I mean, that's incredible, but we're going to continue it on another podcast what I do have a question about is if you can just summarize the last ten years in about five bullet points really

what are the biggest takeaways? I certainly have heard be patient with the process. What other things do you think if, you know, there's a school that's just starting out on their journey or curious about Maths — No Problem!, what are the most valuable pieces of advice you could give them?

I would say obviously as you recognise you have to have patience at the beginning and I think you have to make sure there is a buy-in from your key members of staff. I think you also have to, once it's initiated, you have to revisit it regularly. It's not something that happens in autumn and then you pick up in the summer. I think you have to have regular moments in time where you look at what that progression is. I think you have to

maintain a constant conversation about maths and what that feels and what that looks like so you can sort of forecast what that will look like going forwards. I would say that's four bullet points Rosie.

Okay I'm going to say culture, professional trust, professional respect or everything so allowing your staff space to make those mistakes to try things out and to be brave.