The guide, released on Sunday, follows the researchers’ call for all state governments, and the Catholic and independent school sectors, to commit to a 10-year Maths Guarantee strategy to lift the nation’s maths achievement in primary schools.

Nick Parkinson, senior associate at Grattan Institute, urges principals to not wait for governments to lead the charge here.

The cost of inaction is too great, he suggests.

“Schools don’t need to wait, like there are practical steps that they can take now to transform maths practice.

“The reason it matters is … every day of school is an opportunity for students to succeed at maths. The longer we wait, the more students we risk falling behind,” he tells EducationHQ.

The guide breaks down in detail the key features of a systematic, school-wide approach to maths, including allocating ‘purposeful’ time for the subject, using shared curriculum materials, and explains how leaders can build their teachers’ expertise in evidence-aligned instruction.

A handy checklist takes principals through the critical steps needed to embed this in their context. 

“The reason that it’s vital that leaders do it is, maths is a highly cumulative discipline,” Parkinson says.

“And so it matters to have a coordinated approach within a school, so that that learning sequence for students is sequential and builds logically over time.”

Drawn from diverse socio-economic and school sector contexts, the varied line-up of exemplary schools highlighted in the guide shows how the fundamentals of best-practice in maths apply everywhere.

“We can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that students learn maths differently, whether they’re in Wollongong, or whether they’re in Fremantle, but the way that students learn maths is quite similar, regardless of their context,” Parkinson adds.

“What was striking in this project, was that these seven schools, which were representing all sorts of schools: government, private, Catholic, in wealthy areas, in poorer areas, in the suburbs, in the regions, they all had features that were very similar...”

Firstly, all used shared high-quality curriculum materials for maths, Parkinson notes.

“Mini whiteboards were common in all the classes. There was high-paced interactive maths teaching. They took really seriously the fact that students need to have built fluency with their mathematical facts as well as procedures.

“These are things which the evidence-based makes clear are true, regardless of the school you may be in, the postcode of that school, and the types of students you have…”

The schools profiled in the guide are: 

  • Wattle Grove Primary, a government school in suburban Perth.
  • Bentleigh West Primary, a government school in suburban Melbourne.
  • Ballarat Clarendon College, an independent school in regional Victoria.
  • St Bernard’s Primary, a Catholic school in Batemans Bay on the NSW south coast.
  • Charlestown South Public, a government school in Newcastle, NSW.
  • The Entrance Public, a government school on the NSW central coast.
  • Budgewoi Public, a government school also on the NSW central coast.

At the start of their maths improvement journey, some principals spoke of the practical ways in which they won the hearts and minds of their staff to bring in change. 

“A common approach was to visit a high-performing school,” Parkinson explains.

“So resourcing, (they provided) the time release for teachers to visit those other schools and form those connections.

“This was really important within the explicit and systematic teaching network in New South Wales. We profiled three schools from that group that were really inspired by the work of Blue Haven, which was a leading primary school.

“Teachers often visited and saw at that school that the kids looked similar to their kids, but they seemed to be … much more ahead in maths.”

Drawing on student data can also be a ‘really powerful’ means of ushering in improvement, the researcher says.

“In many of the schools, being able to look at what students could do, and what students were struggling to do, and having data as a way to have a frank conversation was really helpful.”

Then there’s the case to be made for thoroughly pondering your ‘why’, Parkinson advises.

“So particularly thinking about the science of how humans work, and particularly the evidence-base for maths.

“Schools did various things to build a shared understanding amongst teachers. Sometimes this was a shared staff book club.

“So, all staff at one of our schools read Rosenshine’s principles (of instruction).”

Ensuring all teachers are receiving the same professional learning in maths teaching is essential – and especially at the outset, Parkinson urges.

“In some schools, there is a culture [where] staff might choose their own professional learning, or on a professional learning day, that time is spent in teams doing collaborative planning … there’s no guarantee they’re all getting the same message.

“So our schools often, particularly in the early years, made sure that all staff were doing the same professional learning, and that that professional learning was aligned to the evidence-base.

“That was an opportunity to build some shared language.”

Principals at the case study schools were also heavily involved in maths learning at the classroom level. Visibility was a big part of this, Parkinson says.

“It was really important for principals to be seen in classrooms, to be seen being engaged in the work of improving maths.

“If a teacher was sick and a principal was at hand, they sometimes even stepped in and taught classes and demonstrated lessons.”

He recalls one poignant conversation with Julie Roberts, principal at Wattle Grove Primary School.

“She said, ‘teaching and learning is the business of a principal’. It’s the key thing that they want to be focused on and worried about.

“So leaders felt personally responsible for students’ maths outcomes and were deeply invested in the way it was taught.

“And the reason that this matters is because principals felt at our schools that they shouldn’t be asking teachers to do something that they couldn’t do themselves, or that they couldn’t explain the ‘why’ behind it.”

While it might not be reasonable to expect every principal to know ‘the best representation to use when introducing how to add fractions’, Parkinson says what we can expect of school leaders is that they “understand the principles of effective maths teaching”.

“And that they’re able to go in and out of class and see if things look broadly on track, and then that they’ve delegated responsibility to teachers and supported those teachers to have the expertise to then get into that next level of detail,” he adds.

The researcher says the team were surprised by the clarity and precision with which the principals were able to articulate their vision for maths teaching.

“They had a very clear vision and then followed through with that vision with the concrete support and materials needed to bring it to life.”

There is a definitely good news story to be told here, Parkinson concludes. 

“Maths is really tractable to high quality teaching. Students in maths can experience that sugar hit of success, and particularly for students who might be from a background where they might have a dysfunctional home environment, the structure and the success that they can feel in maths can be really transformational.”

When compared to initiatives to lift outcomes in things like literacy or wellbeing, improving maths teaching is one that brings early rewards quite quickly, he notes. 

“So I’d be urging principals to take up that challenge to not wait for others to get cracking with maths, and to see the results and see happy students and happy teachers as soon as they can.”