Primary Teaching for Mastery Sustaining Work Group

The Primary Teaching for Mastery Sustaining Work Group is for all primary schools who have previously participated in a Primary Teaching for Mastery Work Group (TRG), or who are Mastery Specialist schools. It brings together schools that are working on continued development to sustain their teaching for mastery approach to mathematics. It seeks to establish continuing support for collaborative planning and specialist subject knowledge development in primary schools and leadership within the school. Schools that have engaged in Sustaining Work Groups in 2022/23 will continue to work within these professional communities in 2023/24 and beyond.

What is involved?

The Work Group combines six workshop sessions spread out over the year, led by the Work Group Lead (a Mastery Specialist). School-based work is led by the lead participants in their own schools. Workshops include opportunity for:

•  Leadership focus: during the year the Work Group will discuss and reflect on practice associated with the pedagogical/policy issues identified as priorities in the opening workshop. In any session, the group would seek to support the leaders to work through their current context, how they might implement change, and later in the year reflect on the impact of the change. All schools will write an action plan which will be refined and adjusted over the year.
• Collaborative planning focus: teachers from the participant schools plan together and create sequences of lessons. The teachers will continue to plan collaboratively within school and across schools both face-to-face and online – reflecting on their practice, observing each other and refining plans as a result of feedback and discussion.
• Subject knowledge development: the planning will provide a vehicle for teachers to develop their subject knowledge through using the NCETM Primary Professional Development Materials; the leaders will create the right culture for this to be a regular feature of the professional development offer in their schools.

Benefits

Participants and their schools will:

• Enhance their mathematical subject knowledge, emphasising key areas of maths
• Learn how to establish an effective collaborative planning culture
• Plan, teach and reflect collaboratively to provide a coherent mastery curriculum
• Continue to refine school structures and systems to embed and sustain mastery
• Continue to ensure a sustainable model for collaborative planning and ongoing specialist subject knowledge development for all teachers.

To find out what four local Headteachers have to say about the programme, follow the link: Headteacher Advocates

Who is it for?

Schools participating will have previously taken part in a Primary Teaching for Mastery Work Group and might have received support for embedding teaching for mastery through a Sustaining or Embedding Work Group. A key characteristic of all the schools is strong commitment from both school and subject leadership for sustaining mastery approaches and for most teachers to have already started using mastery approaches. Each school will have a lead participant in the Work Group, normally the subject leader for maths. They are likely to have played a lead role in previous years. At different points in the year other teachers will participate in aspects of the Work Group workshops, either when hosting a TRG session or participating in a collaborative planning session.

What is the Cost?

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

Interested?

We are no longer accepting enrolment for this Work Group, however if you would like to express an interest in our 2024/25 Work Group, please complete our expression of interest form linked below