SECONDARY TEACHING FOR MASTERY: DEVELOPMENT

The secondary teaching for mastery NCPs form a long-term programme for schools to develop highly effective classroom practices so all students develop a secure, deep and connected understanding of maths. It is vital not only that individual teachers develop teaching for mastery approaches, but also that the department as a whole has systems, policies and ways of working which are compatible with teaching for mastery, and allow for the collaborative professional development structures which are needed in order to develop and embed these approaches and to sustain them in the long term.

This is a bespoke programme of support, with the Work Group Lead spending most of their time working alongside and supporting the Advocates. Over an extended time frame, the progression should be from supporting Advocates to develop their own classroom practice (24-12), then enabling the Advocates to work with their colleagues (24-13), and finally developing their department’s structures and systems (24 -14). In signing up to this Work Group, schools should appreciate that they have joined a long-term programme, so development will be a gradual process and the focus of activity will shift over time.

Support from a Secondary Mastery Specialist will include a mixture of working directly with the Advocates as a group, and working with each individual school alongside the relevant Advocates.

Work is likely to include the Mastery Specialist leading PD sessions with the Advocates to enable them to understand the principles and practices associated with teaching for mastery, and Advocates observing the Mastery Specialist in the specialist’s own school. It will also include the Mastery Specialist working alongside Advocates (and possibly other members of the department) to jointly plan individual lessons, sequences of lessons or longer units of work, as well as the Mastery Specialist observing and giving feedback to Advocates following a lesson.

Work might also include the Mastery Specialist supporting the Advocates to enable them to lead PD sessions for their departmental colleagues. This could include shared planning of sessions, but the intention is for the Advocates to take the leading role in working with their departments. The Mastery Specialist may work alongside the Advocates to support and develop other departmental members’ teaching as appropriate, and to develop schemes of work and other departmental systems and structures to allow for a full teaching for mastery approach.

Secondary schools and maths departments that want to introduce and develop teaching for mastery can join the Work Group and should nominate two teachers as Mastery Advocates.

All maths teachers, from ECTs to heads of department, can be nominated as Mastery Advocates. At least one of the Mastery Advocates from each school should be an experienced teacher with substantial responsibility within the department and the authority to make change happen. All Mastery Advocates should have a passion for developing teaching and an enthusiasm to work with their departmental colleagues to instigate change.

Mastery Advocates need the full support of the head of department and headteacher, and mechanisms must be in place to enable department-wide development and change to happen over an extended timeframe.

Between the two Advocates, a minimum of 10 days’ work is expected in order to understand teaching for mastery and to develop the principles within their teaching.



Initially, Mastery Advocates will work with materials, such as the NCETM Secondary Mastery Professional Development Materials, which are designed to help them understand the Five Big Ideas.