Research study

Where it comes from

The Mastering Maths research study builds on the CfEM efficacy trial. You can read the report of the trial here.

The trial found that students of teachers in the full intervention group made an estimated one month of progress in comparison to the control group. The more deprived students made an estimated two months' of progress in comparison to the control group. 

Three organisations

The Mastering Maths research study has three key partners.

• The Education Endowment Foundation is overseeing and funding the research study.

• The University of Nottingham's Centre for Research in Mathematics Education is running the Mastering Maths programme together with 12 Lead Teachers.

• NatCen is evaluating the programme.

Two groups of teachers

• 161 teachers from 101 different college settings

• All the 16-19 year-old GCSE students of these 161 teachers take part in the research, totalling about 8000 students.

• Teachers were randomly allocated into intervention and control groups. 

• Teachers in the control group provide NatCen with data, but otherwise they do what they would normally do. 

• The teachers in the intervention group take part in the Mastering Maths programme.

The Mastering Maths programme

The Mastering Maths programme involves 

• taking part in two days of full-cohort professional development (October 2024)

• taking part in five cycles of lesson study professional development in cluster groups of about six teachers and one Lead Teacher (approximately one a month in November, December, January, February and March)

• teaching five Mastering Maths research lessons (approximately one a month in November, December, January, February and March)

• adopting the Mastering Maths approach more widely in your lessons.

Evaluating the Mastering Maths programme

The evaluation of the programme is a randomised controlled trial which compares the outcomes of students of teachers in the intervention and control group in the GCSE exams in Summer 2025.

The evaluation needs the following data from both the control group and the intervention group

• lists of GCSE maths students in the classes of the participating teacher (in November 2024, updated in January 2025)

• paper-based surveys completed by students in the classes of the participating teacher and teachers (in March/April 2025)

• GCSE maths scores of students in the classes of the participating teacher (in August/September 2025)

NatCen’s implementation and process evaluation will also include four case studies in each of the intervention and control groups. The case studies will provide in-depth qualitative data which will help the evaluation team understand how teachers in the intervention group are using the Mastering Maths approach and how this contrasts with practice in the control teachers’ lessons.

All data collected will be anonymised. Natcen will store, use and protect your data in line with the GDPR (UK) guidance. Here is their privacy notice. 

The Theory of Change for Mastering Maths (also called a Logic Model) is shown here below. 

Roles and responsibilities

The Lead Teacher is responsible for 

• organising the cluster meetings

• leading the lesson study

• introducing the next lesson everyone will teach

• gathering records of attendance at cluster meetings and when the teachers taught the lessons

As a trial teacher you will

• be provided with links to lessons 1 - 12 (lesson plans, presentation, worksheets etc);​

• teach five of lessons 1 to 12 in Windows 1 to 5 to all your GCSE resit classes (the lessons will be chosen by your cluster group and all teachers in the group will teach the lesson you have chosen in the selected window);​

• teach any of the other Mastering Maths lessons at any time to one or more of your GCSE classes (this is optional but recommended);

• adopt the approaches modelled by the lessons in other lessons;​

• record when you taught the lessons agreed by the cluster group and to which class;

• participate in the five lesson study cluster groups led by your Lead Teacher.

Windows

The windows for the five cycles of activity are:

• 21st October to 22nd November 2024

• 25th November to 20th December 2024

• 2nd January to 24th January 2025

• 27th January to 28th February 2025

• 3rd March to 11th April 2025

It is recognised that there may have to be some flexibility around the edges of these windows to fit everything in. 

What happens and when?

Important note

When you signed up to Mastering Maths your line manager agreed to support you take part in the study. Whilst recognising that in colleges a lot can change from one year to the next it is important to try to stick to the commitments that were made as the Mastering Maths intervention can only work if we stick as closely as we can to the plan that is given in some detail in the Logic Model. We hope that you can stick to the programme with the full support of your line manager.

If you are hosting a lesson study day at your college it is important that you are released from your day-to-day work as if you were visiting another college. On that day as the teacher teaching the lesson study lesson, it is particularly important that you can give it your full attention throughout the day. Hopefully, your line manager will appreciate that this is important for you and your college.

October 2024

Teachers attended the full cohort professional development sessions in the weeks beginning 7th October (Session 1) and 14th October (Session 2).

For those who, for various reasons didn’t manage to get to one or both of the sessions, there will be mop-up Zoom sessions from 2pm to 4pm on 

• 6th November (attend this if you missed Session 1) (link here)

• 13th November (attend this if you missed Session 2) (link here)

Desmos self-study materials will be available to support all teachers but it is expected that the teachers in the mop-up groups will work through these materials prior to the online Zoom sessions. You can find links to all the self-study materials here.

You have received the Student Information Sheets and gathered the names of students who are unwilling to take part. At this stage there is nothing further for you to do in this respect. 

November and December 2024

You will 

• take part in the lesson study cluster meeting cycle for Windows 1 and 2 (your Lead Teacher will organise these)

• share information about participating students with NatCen, using the Excel template supplied by NatCen; exclude the students who are unwilling to take part (NatCen will provide explicit instructions about how to do this).

January to March 2025

You will

• take part in the lesson study cluster meeting cycle for Windows 3, 4 and 5 (your Lead Teacher will organise these)

• in January, update your student lists for additional information about whether they attempted and passed the November GCSE resit exam for maths, as well as students’ UCI and GCSE numbers (NatCen will provide instructions)

• in February, four teachers will be invited to take part in case study research with NatCen

• in March receive paper-based surveys for participating students to complete and return them to NatCen (NatCen will provide explicit instructions about what to do)

• in March receive a paper-based survey for you to complete and return it to NatCen (NatCen will provide explicit instructions about what to do).

August/September 2025

Your college will share your students’ item by item GCSE scores with NatCen (NatCen will provide explicit instructions about what to do). There is a possibility that NatCen will access the scores directly from exam boards. If this is the case, the NatCen research team will let you know.