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Teaching for Mastery

Mastering maths means pupils acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject.

The phrase ‘teaching for mastery’ describes the elements of classroom practice and school organisation that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering maths.

Achieving mastery means acquiring a solid enough understanding of the maths that’s been taught to enable pupils to move on to more advanced material.

The teaching for mastery programme comprises a range of projects and activities for early years, primary and secondary.

Five Big Ideas in
Teaching for Mastery

Our Teaching for Mastery programmes are run by Mastery Specialists, who are given a year’s intensive training in the principles of teaching for mastery, underpinned by its Five Big Ideas, and in professional development leadership. In the following year, they further develop teaching for mastery in their own schools and then share the approach with neighbouring schools by leading Teaching for Mastery Work Groups.

If you are interested in the research behind teaching for mastery, there are a number of research papers available in the NCETM’s website page of Supporting Research, Evidence and Argument.

Five Big Ideas underpin teaching for mastery in both primary and secondary schools.  These are coherence, representation & structure, mathematical thinking, fluency and variation.

Teaching for Mastery