St Mary’s C.E. Primary School
Manchester, UK

In their own words

Our Maths — No Problem! journey

We began our journey in 2014 at St Mary’s. We realised that to make a difference within our maths teaching we needed to do things differently. The curriculum was solid enough and we were achieving well, but the resilience of the learning was just not good enough. We were finding that the basics were too easy to be unembedded and we needed to think more creatively and with more clarity about the needs of our children.

Through observation and professional dialogue, we realised that there were aspects of our teaching that were creating barriers to learning that need to be addressed. We needed more opportunities for our children to deeply embed their learning, to apply and develop skills, and to cultivate mathematical dialogue.

Through collaboration with North West One Maths Hub and by making the most of Maths — No Problem! professional development opportunities, we have been able to develop a culture where everyone is 100 percent behind the Singapore approach to maths learning and continually working on further developing their practice.

Maths — No Problem! in our school

The governors of St Mary’s have been very supportive of the Singapore maths approach and have made it a key element of the school’s development plan. We were therefore able to move our maths lead and assistant head away from class teaching, enabling them to support the rest of the staff. They now deliver lots of team teaching and subject training, and they drive the school’s commitment to mathematics as a top priority. Our current maths lead continues to work closely with teachers to develop skills and knowledge throughout the school.

MNP is now fully embedded throughout Years 1–6. Textbooks and journals are a part of daily learning and online teaching resources have become an integral component of lesson planning and implementation.

What’s more, we’ve noticed a growing confidence and subject expertise in our teachers as well as high levels of competence and enthusiasm for maths among our children. We never stop learning and always have things to work on but the MNP programme is the bedrock to facilitate these improvements.

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