Leading Mathematics: 4 Steps to Success

Hi, my name is Peter Richardson. I am currently deputy Head at Walterleydale Primary School in Preston, Lancashire. I'm going to talk to you today about having four steps to success when you are leading mathematics. Now, I've got experience of different leadership roles over the last 13, 14 years and all of those have these four steps in common. They're also transferable to pretty much any school and pretty much any. Any kind of leadership role. Today, we're going to focus purely on mathematics and within mathematics, we're going to look at how vision, the strong vision, being strategic, being inspirational, and also the detail that's involved can ensure that you, as a leader, drive mathematics forward and make sure you're giving the pupils and your school the very best learning possible. So the vision is absolutely critical in doing this. We're going to break that down now and look at how we can improve your ability to tell other people what you want in driving maths forwards and how to take them with you and have them contribute to your ideas. First of all, you have to have the big picture. You've got to know what the purpose of mathematics is in a primary school level. That boils down to what's in the national curriculum. You've got to know how it fits together and where it goes to in terms of Key Stage 3 and also the early years curriculum as well. You've also got to know where you want to go. So we'll look at that more in detail in a minute. But basically, you know that from that national curriculum, what is there within that that you really want to focus on? What does your school need and what do you believe in? It really is all about your belief, that leader, as a maths leader, about what will make the difference to your group of children in your school and your catchment area. And then we're going to look at how you can communicate that really clearly with the rest of your school, not just the other teachers, but also the other stakeholders, so the governors and also parents. It's all part of that same bigger picture, fitting that together so that you create a very clear direction for your school to go in when you're leading mathematics. So let's look at that bigger picture and let's look at the national curriculum. So in the purpose of study, it talks about having a high quality mathematics education that enables you to reason and enables you to understand the kind of, the beauty and the power of mathematics. It says it's interconnected. So you've got lots of different areas within maths and you've got to understand how they relate together, that's kind of the background of maths and reason why you're doing it. Now, within the aims, there are three distinct areas. You've got the fluency, the reasoning and the problem solving. And this for me forms the core of not only what you should be having as your vision and direction for in maths, but also for what you actually want to improve and how to funnel and filter the information that you're gathering from everywhere into focusing on what is it that I want to really us to really stand for as a school within mathematics. So the fluency obviously is about them being able to quickly apply different processes in different skills, whether that's number facts, formal written methods of multiplication to any situation fluently and easily, and being able to interchange those different, different elements. The reasoning is also vital. And it's really where the new curriculum stands out in that being able to reason with each other, the children, and reason with their own processes and being able to explain that process. That's really, for me, a huge significant increased factor in the new curriculum. And that is for me, a big part of our school's philosophy and vision and direction for our mathematics. The other area is problem solving, which will be familiar to everyone who's from the previous curriculum, but that has even more of a focus in the new curriculum. So as maths is an interconnected subject, what we need to be able to make sure we have children do is move between different representations within their mathematics so that they can apply those processes that they know within a written word problem and then into a finding all the possibilities problem to a discrete calculation that they have to do as well. So being able to do all those different, those different interconnected areas and understand where that maths is all linked together is vital in terms of you deciding what you want from your direction for mathematics. This is the national curriculum, this is your starting point, but you want to tailor it and focus on the areas that work best for you as a school and what you personally believe in, as well as hopefully integrating ideas from parents, from other stakeholders, particularly the children as well. So the purpose, the area studies also talks about how you should have consolidation on various areas that need more depth of understanding delivered. Because in the previous curriculum it was very much been about, well, we're here, so the next steps here and the next steps here and move on. And the lessons they're learning today, they must make progress, let's push on, push on, push on. Whereas that isn't how learning works. For children to really understand well, they have to Understand deeply. And that's what this curriculum is all about. It's all about having a deep understanding of mathematics and how all those different areas are interrelated through your fluency, through your reasoning and through your problem solving. And by having that they, the children will be able to pretty much master the content that they're looking at, which is why this curriculum seems to be very much built for a mastery approach to mathematics, which we'll talk about in a little while. So knowing that that's the big picture, you have to then think about where you want to go, which we've touched on already. And for me, these are the kinds of things you need to be considering, subject, leader, and also in line with the rest or your school's senior leadership team. So we've already seen that we have fluency, reasoning and problem solving as three key areas that you can kind of then subdivide and focus on within what you want to achieve within maths at your school from its starting point now to where you want to take it and what journey you're going to go on. Now these words are very, very important. Pace. It's not about pace, about pounding through the curriculum, like we just mentioned, it's about the speed of thinking and the depth of understanding, which is why we keep mentioning this word depth. Now, acceleration and challenge are words that are picked out from the National Curriculum. Acceleration we do not want to be. We move on to the next year groups content. The national curriculum back here talks about children broadly moving at the same rate. There's obviously going to be some children that aren't sen children who have learning difficulties in areas of mathematics, which would mean some barriers to their learning, which means they simply can't move at the same pace as others. And you can interpret it however you want, but in general, most of the children will be working on the similar kinds of content for their year group's expectations. At the same time, that means acceleration isn't really a thing anymore. You wouldn't accelerate them to move on to their next year groups content, but perhaps you could accelerate them if they are receiving interventions and you want them to catch up to where the majority of the class are with their age related expectations. Challenge is key though, because whilst you're doing all those age related expectations, you're going to have some children that get things, particularly those children who find the fluency quite easy. So then you as a school and as a leader have to think, well, how can we communicate clearly to our staff and have systems in place that mean our children who are attaining well are able to continue to deepen their understanding at those year group expectations and where they're in. You don't want to be giving them pages and pages more of the same stuff, because if they can show you they can do a written method of addition on six calculations and those calculations have exchanging in multiple places, then you're going to be able to do another six, you'll be able to do another 10 generally. So unless it's getting harder, which is going to go into new year groups content, you'll going to be able to want to deepen their understanding by challenging them and making them think. So the pace is about the pace of thinking the children are going in, not acceleration. So that's things to consider. Consolidation is also a word that is mentioned in the national curriculum. Children not sufficiently fluent with early materials should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice before moving on. So it's built into the new curriculum that children need consolidation. In my experience, the majority of children need a significant amount of consolidation by looking at those their learning in different contexts. So the variation of the different context that they're having that information given to them in and being able to apply those skills in different contexts is part of consolidation. It's not just about repeatedly making yourself more fluent with actual process, it's about being fluent in how you apply that process in different situations. Mastery scheme or Approach what do you want to do with your curriculum? Do you want to get a ready made out of the box mastery scheme and use that to drive maths through your school? It is going to depend on the type of teachers you have, what you believe in, your understanding of mastery and understand course, the budget available for your school, or do you want to create your own? Is there a very good practice already going on in school that you want to build on and use supporting resources, or do you just want to continue doing what has worked well for your school at the moment? It all depends on your school situation. But you need to consider what we've talked about so far related to fluency and particularly to do with reasoning and problem solving, how you embed that within your children's learning and within your school as a system, connections and other subjects. We've talked about the interrelated nature of maths already and you have got to consider how can you apply those mathematical processes? How can you apply the children's knowledge in other subjects? There's a big link to be made with computing, huge link to be made with computing, to do with problem solving, to do with computational thinking in computing. So looking through a problem, working out how to subdivide it, those kinds of things. There's also big links with design technology as well. So it depends how you're working on the different structure, how you're working on different, like unit within design technology. But primarily there's links between maths and computing. You could harness that depending on the nature of your computing within your school as well. So these are kinds of things that you want to look at and want to be really strongly clear in your mind about where you want to take learning in your school within mathematics. So to do that, once you've got your clear idea. So we've looked at the big picture, we've seen. You've seen what the national curriculum talks about, you've kind of got a flavour for what it's like in your school, where your school are at with mathematics. You then start to think about where you want to take mathematics and then it's all about. Once you've formulated that and shared that with the rest of your leadership team or built on it with them, or you've engaged the children, governors, parents in starting getting an overall view of where you want to take things, you need to communicate that clearly back out again. Your vision statement is critical in doing this. I've been on some leadership courses before where people will gloss over the vision statement and several head teachers will, by their very nature, focus on task, task, task, task. But without your staff knowing clearly where they're going to go and what you really believe in as a school, which is communicated, shorted all the way down to your vision statement, that is where you always go back to. And without having that, you. It's like being headless. It's a headless chicken running around. Or it's like your staff not being very clear about direction, about where they should go. You can filter everything down that you believe in into two or three sentences, and if you can do that concisely, then you have a vision statement that can really stand the test of time. It might need to be adjusted over time as things change, but certainly not for the foreseeable future. And that vision statement can really clearly communicate to the teachers across your school, children, if you put it into their words, but also to parents about where you want to take maths and how you're going to get there as well. You can do that. Alongside that, you can. You can instil that understanding about where you're going by using little tools like a diamond nine with your staff or listing negatives and then getting them to switch round to a positive way of thinking about that and being able to give them the time to air any concerns that they have. Too many times in staff meetings, I've seen staff mutter in the background or stay silent. Not really very happy with what's going on. They don't believe in something that's being said and so they're never going to be fully on board with it. You're never going to get the change that you want when you haven't at least made an effort to get staff, their views heard and start to either turn their views around or actually, quite often they'll bring something that you haven't thought of before and you might need to reflect on that as a leader and then potentially either change your approach very slightly or come back with them after thinking about it and explain why you're doing it that way, at the very least, even if they disagree with you still, then they've understood why you're doing it. And again, it goes back to your vision statement. If it's there, then they'll understand why and they're more likely to go along with it and you've made an effort to get them on board with it and then you've got a very clear carrot and stick that you can use after that. So we'll look at each of these now in turn. Here's a vision statement I've made earlier. So, through their fluency of basic knowledge, children passionately reason with each other and themselves. So it's coming out here that the fluency of the basic skills in this vision statement is key. That means year one, year two and early years, if you transfer this and apply into early years as well, need to be very fluent on number facts. Okay? Children passionately reason with each other and themselves, so that means they're thinking internally about what they're doing and also having that communication with other children passionately. Well, that means they're going to be enjoying their maths. That's what we want. We want the children to enjoy what they're doing and being able to have those discussions with their partners, with other people in the room and also internally in themselves. So if they're writing in a maths journal or they're checking their work, or they're starting to understand something. Those thoughts, that metacognition that's going on, or their discussions with other children through that reasoning, that's going to be vitally important in this vision statement, they find beauty in the interconnection and power of mathematics. That's pretty much Taken straight from the national curriculum. So you can see that it's all about having the wonder of maths in itself, rather than making it in a Minecraft context to make them really excited about it. Because what tends to happen then is the children remember all about Minecraft, they don't remember about the maths. So it's making maths itself the exciting part of that's what that's saying. It's fundamental relationship with other subjects. So it's again making those links with other subjects, interconnected mathematical concepts and how to relate them in a wider context in life. So for me, the part that really stands out here is that first part is that fluency of basic knowledge is about reasoning with each other. The other part is also vital, otherwise it wouldn't be there. But we've got this in two sentences. That's your vision statement that gives clear purpose and direction for pretty much the core of what you're doing moving forward and that journey you want to take your children, your staff and all your stakeholders. On Diamond 9, if you're not familiar with this, you're going to love it. If you are familiar with this, you're probably going to roll your eyes. But it's a really good discussion point. You could informing your vision statement, you could have nine, which is why it's called a Diamond nine. Nine statements about mathematics that you want your staff in pairs and groups to order and organize. Now, the way Diamond 9 works is the most important goes on the top, the least important goes at the bottom. So as you can see, it staggers and there's more in the middle and goes less again as you go down. So you want to try and find. I do this before I did my vision statement with the staff. I'd say, okay, what do you believe in in maths? Give them nine fairly generic little areas. See whether the same things come out on top. That will give you a perspective of what the staff believe in and it will also help inform you as to whether your staff's ideas are similar to where you want to take maths. But a Diamond nine is a very handy way of generating discussion among staff. This one's a useful one and there's loads of these kinds of things out there. Just Google. Google away for leadership techniques and getting people on board. But this is one that I think was in an NCSL course. Basically, all you need to do with this is give people a blank sheet. One side says negatives, the other side it says positives. And all you need to do is get a member of staff after they've been introduced to the vision statement or anything to do with mathematics that you, you want to change, they write something down that they don't like about what you've just asked them to do. So, for example, we have here, if it was a mastery curriculum and we want everyone to progress onto together. Children have got different needs, that's going to come out. Why are we going to move them on together? How am I going to do that? They've got different needs, they need to be dealt with differently. So you put your negative down and when you do that as a group, you start to try and flip that to the more positive side of the same thing. Well, if they're all going to be moving on together, it's certainly going to be an easier lesson structure, it's going to be easy to plan and organize another one. Slower pace. All this talking discussion is going to really slow down getting through all the content. Well, no, because thinking is going to happen more and pace can be looked at as thinking deepening. And it's about how well you deepen the children's understanding and how much thinking is going on. Because without thinking, children aren't going to be learning. So that's how you can flip something over. The one they'll all say will be, I haven't got enough time for that. So good luck if you can come up with any positive parts about that. But if you're really nice, as you'll already negotiated with your head staff meeting time for them to go and organise things or, or for payback time for whatever you're putting in place. So that would be a little suggestion. So these kind of tools, the diamond nine and that one, there's loads out there. These are just two examples of the kinds of things where rather than just standing there telling your staff what's going to change, you are involving them in the process and that is what's critical. When you've got your vision statement, building their ideas in as well, or even, even if it's your ideas but they're agreeing with it, that's absolutely fine. But then being able to get them to discuss and potentially adjust your vision statement, that is really powerful because then those members of staff are going to have no excuses not to be able to go on that journey with you. They'll also be more enthused about doing that because you've empowered them a little by including them in the process. In this section we're going to look at how you can be strategic in coupling your vision and everything we've talked about so far, and starting to put that into more tangible, concrete ideas about how to move that subject, mathematics, forward and take people with you on that journey so you'll get more out of them and it will make a bigger difference to your children. So when you're being strategic, the starting point has to be you've got to know your data, the data that you're going to produce, as long as it's reliable data. Otherwise your starting point is getting some reliable data. Then once you've got that data, you can use that data in an action plan, which we'll talk about more in a minute. Within that action plan, you can look at what kind of support you're going to be putting in place and then monitoring what's going on to ensure that the systems and the policies that you have are actually taking place and seeing and measuring, and this is key, the impact that what you've put in place actually has in practice. Because if it doesn't make any difference and you've given enough time to make a difference, why are you still doing it? So know your data. The first thing you would be asked by an external organisation such as Ofsted would be the percentage of children, you need to know this, the percentage of children that are the expectations for their year group, first of all, year two and year six. Now, you don't need to memorise this, but you need to know what percentage of children are reaching those national expectations at the end of key stage one, at the end of key stage two, then you also, on top of that, it would be very advisable to know throughout your school, having used a really good quality way of getting data, whether that's a test, whether that's teacher subject assessments, that's entirely up to you. And that can form part of the direction for your school. What are the percentages at the expectation? Are working at greater depth in that expectation towards that expectation, or are they well below the expectations of that year group? It starts by knowing the percentage of the children that are at that year group's expectation, or above whatever terminology you use. We need to know the key stage one and two results, as we've just mentioned. The reason being is that's what's reported nationally, that's what's standardised by within a national framework, key stage one being teacher assessed and key stage two being purely based on the new tests. So over time you can look for trends and you can also look for comparisons within your school's in house data assessment system. So if you have a test that Matches very well with the SATs in year six and in year two. The chances are you can use that as a very good tracking mechanism to see how children are progressing throughout school. However, if you use teacher assessment and that can be very good. But for example, if your teachers are not experienced and moving into a new gear group, you have a new member of staff coming in, loses a different system because at the end of the day assessment is down towards the school to decide on what's best for the children. Now then you're going to have results that aren't necessarily going to show you a pattern that you can do anything about. And that's what being strategic is all about. It's looking for areas of strength and areas that you can develop within your subject and then doing something about it. It's no good knowing it without doing something about it. But you're only as good as your data. So if your data is telling you one thing, or even worse, if you manufacture it to tell you one thing, there's no point in it. So you use your professional judgment and you do use your gut about what you know about the children in your school, but you back it up with the data. So moving on to action planning. Now you don't need to make a huge, beautifully multicolored 12 page document for your action plan. If you do, you won't refer to it during the year it should be in. The action plans would be working documents where you are going back to them, adjusting them, scribbling on them if you needed to. At the very least making a mental note of how far you are progressing through this. If this was in an industry, you would use Gantt charts or you would use software that would be a project management software that would show you milestones as you go through your project. Now a good action plan would still have milestones, but you don't need any of that additional software because really at the end of the day you're going, okay, if I want the children to do this or if I want, if I want this change to be in place, then all I've got to do is know what steps I need in all the order they need to be taken to get there and what impact has it had. So you can do that in a word document, no problem. Start off with, you need measurable targets that you can achieve within what you're setting out to change. That might be the simplest one would be something like, okay, well I want to have a reliable system to gather data which would be about assessing different testing systems, assessing teacher Assessing systems, deciding what way is best for your school. It could be you want to raise the fluency within school of those basic skills. Taking on board the example vision statement we said before now that could be measurable because as a target you can break that down in the success criteria. Could be, okay, well we're going to put in place some weekly mental math challenges and we should have in key stage one, 85% of children are able to get nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10 in three months, six months, 12 months time. So you can make it measurable by putting targets in place like that. That might not be realistic. It might be very realistic. It all depends on your school and what you want to put in place. It's important to notice that sticking a mental maths test is not going to necessarily significantly improve the quality. That was just one example. That was one way you could measure the target. What you might put in place will all be the resources and what you do within that target. So the success criteria which you've touched on there would be about how that target is managed to be measured and what it's going to look like. So another success criteria for your, the children's fluency to be significantly enhanced would be that children are able to apply those their number facts within word problems and then obviously you can make that more measurable should you want to or should you need to. And again, you really want to be able to start measuring this at the start and at the end of the process to see what impact it has in terms of the resources. When we talk about resources, we're talking about time, money and the kinds of systems you're putting in place and changes to school policy or systems. If it's not going to be a policy. So it could be a new calculation policy that you're putting in place and then you're training your staff to understand that calculation policy better. So the target would be focused on improving calculation. The success criteria would be all staff know. The calculation policy should be a good start. It would also be that children can apply that those calculations that are appropriate to their year group, in their learning and quite possibly as an extra for that in across multi disciplines. So different areas of mathematics, so word problems and discrete calculations, missing number problems. So lots of different ways of measuring that and breaking that down into showing how it's been successful. The resources for the doing that would be actually creating the policy. But there also be staff meeting times to be able to introduce this, monitor it and then have another staff meeting time so that you could then feed back to staff about what was still needing to be done and what was working well, because it's really important you tell your staff what the positives are as they move forward. Not just, we still need to do this, we still need to do this, we still need to do this. Celebrate your successes. So that is the action plan itself and what you do with that is you give on that plan support as a resource and you'd also monitor. So we'll look at these two areas now in terms of the support. You need to think, how are you going to be able to achieve this? Are you just going to tell people to do it and they'll do it, which is unlikely? Or are you going to need a new capitulation policy? Are you going to need a structure for number facts throughout your school so that you can make sure that your teachers know what they should be teaching and when? Are you going to need an entire math scheme brought in and teachers trained how to use that and teaching assistants? Either way, you need to consider the training implications of what you want to put in place and be realistic with the time scale. It's generally going to take twice as long, if not three times as long, as you expect or want to be able to put properly embed something into your school planning. Is your staff going to need support in terms of how they plan? Are you going to need to do some team planning? Are you, as a resource, going to have to be freed up out of class so that you can then go and support them, or can you manage to work around it in outside hours and goodwill? So, again, this is where, if you've generated enough understanding and belief in that vision and what you're having to do, there's more potential for staff to be on board with it and do those extra things and therefore you be able to get your messages and your wishes through your leadership team and actually get them in place. So taking. That's why taking things on board and bringing your staff with you is really key. So, yeah, do you need some support with planning? Have you got exemplar plans? You're going to have to create all those kinds of areas in your time. Observations are the other area of support. And I say support because observations shouldn't just be about a fixed point in time. I'm going to judge that staff member and that's it. I'm just going to file that somewhere for a start. Ofsted don't grade individual lessons. My opinion, we shouldn't grade individual lessons. What we should do is take an Overall perspective of how staff are doing as a school. If you want to grade your school teaching and learning, that's fine, apart from the fact you'd also want to look in books, which we'll talk about when we're looking in monitoring in a minute. So you'd have your observations, but they should be about looking at what you've put in place, focusing clearly on those things and looking at what is working well, what you might need to adjust in terms of what you've decided and also what needs to be developed by each teacher and looking for trends in there. And then again, you can go and reflect that in your action plan and update that. So the observations are really important. Peer observations are really good for that, as long as you give a clear structure to what you expect to happen during those observations. Finally, in this section is monitoring. Without monitoring, everything else will fall down. You have to expect teachers when they're super busy. 15 different things. Messages from parents, complaints from parents, seven different subjects demanding things off them. Yes, mathematics is a core subject. Yes, it is hugely vital in terms of the amount of coverage it's given in the primary framework. But different teachers are going to have different pools as well as actual having a life outside teaching. So you are going to need to monitor or things will be dropped and falling down. Be realistic when you are monitoring and I would recommend trying to trust your staff wherever possible in that they are doing the right thing. But then you do need to go and ensure that they are, by doing these things, having summative assessments, by putting in place a point in time three times a year, because the workload review talks about only doing it three times a year, not more. Each term you can have a point in time which gives you the data. Okay? So you need to be able to get the data, you need to ensure that's happening and you need to ensure it's happening in the right conditions. So if you have a test, then whilst you want to trust your members of staff, you could potentially have a member of the leadership team is walking around while those tests are being done to ensure that every child is being given the correct amount, amount of support, so the right amount of time, the right conditions, so nice and quiet, those kinds of things. But you can also ensure that teachers or teaching assistants, whilst they're wanting to do the best for that child and help them, might be overstepping the mark in terms of how much support they're giving them. So you might, we might want to check that again, those kinds of comments. So you want that assessment to be accurate, so you can get that done and feed it into your plan to make it all work together. So that's part one. Bigger than that, though, probably the biggest area on here is looking in books, looking at what the children have produced. I put talking to children alongside that as well. But predominantly you'll be wanting to look in the books and find out what's been going on. Is it what you'd expect to see at that age of age range? Does it show probably progress in terms of what the children are able to do over a period of lessons? Which is why I would potentially suggest you move away from using a finite one lesson observation as a measure of progress of the children in that lesson. You can still see how much progress is made in that lesson towards that objective. But that objective might only be met over a week or a week and then referred back to again in another month for a few more days and again and again, deepening their understanding all the time. So looking in books for children's achievement and attainment improving over time is really, really important. You can also see gaps of where things are not being taught as much or in the way that your policy is, or how you tried to introduce marking will depend on your school's marking policy. Ensure that however you want your marking to take place, that it is built into your school's marking policy. But then you do need to make sure that your school and you ensure that everyone is following the marking policy for maths now with the Mastery curriculum, very much so, I would again suggest that your marking is based on. Do the children need individual comments written in their books to make progress in what the responses are and their feedback? Usually it's no, usually it's yeah, you could give them a quick look at it. But if there's four children that haven't quite got that, give them a keep up little support intervention. By doing that, those children get that feedback, that marking during that intervention. Hopefully that will help them get to the point for the next day where they're able to carry on with the rest of the class or all that class learning together and moving on together. The majority of the class anyway. So that's one way. If it was everybody hadn't quite got it, well, your marking would be feeding that back to them at the start of the next day and going over it. So I would look at marking in terms of feedback, but it's important to say whatever your school's policy is, that's what you need to be ensuring is happening. When you're monitoring, planning Again, it all depends on your policy for how you monitor planning. Now, if you're introducing something new, something big, like an entire mastery scheme, or actually even bigger, a self created, pulled in bit of mastery, different pieces from different places, that's harder because it needs every teacher to have the expertise to be able to know why they're pulling all those things in and fitting it together really well. Either way, you need to think about what you're going to look for in people's planning. If your school take planning in and want to look at it, I would very much recommend that you do in a collaborative kind of way. And it's not a checking up, you're doing planning, it's a we've put this in place, let's see how you're getting on with it and how your understanding of it is showing in your planning. But it's vital to say, at the end of the day, that's more important than that, because now that is what the children are learning. You can change your plans. It's good practice to change your plans as you're going along, however, and you might change it in the lesson. Very much so. Good formative assessment. However, looking in their books will give you a clear indication of what the children have actually done and hopefully what they've learned. You can obviously look at those together. It will take some time if you do. And we have observations, again, monitoring observations that would be less supportive, like the observations we had here, and more finite. Are you putting in place the things over this period of time that we would expect you to. In this section, we're going to look at how you can inspire your staff. That's absolutely vital if you want to put something in place and actually embed it into your school. In an ideal world, what your staff will do without actually inspiring you by how they put things in place, how they've taken your ideas, run with them and gone even further. That's where you want to get to. It builds on what we talked about earlier in the vision and getting them to be part of that process. And that is absolutely critical. And we'll be talking about that when we look at ownership in a minute. It's also about you leading by an example. If you don't lead by example, why should your staff bother doing something if you're not doing it yourself or doing it well? And finally, we're going to look at how you can give your staff confidence to do things, because you need to allow them to make mistakes and you need to give them the confidence to be Able to make mistakes, calculating mistakes, and also to be able to be sure that what they're doing is the right way forwards. And it again goes very much down to your vision statement and, and all those targets you're putting in place and the support you're giving for them through your action plan. So in terms of ownership, you need to be able to get staff to invest their time to do that. You need to plan for time within staff meetings, you need to pay back time in staff meetings, because that's kind of your monetary value by getting them to be on board with things, by getting their voices heard and then genuinely believing. And it's important that it's true that what they think and share is important and is valued by you and the leadership team that they are going to then want to invest time themselves. Teaching is a profession that you go into because you want to make a difference. And staff will invest as much time as they feel is suitable for their work, life balance and improve if they're given clear direction and belief in themselves. So that investing time is really, really important to start to get them to go above and beyond. Okay, you do that, like we said, by including them in the early process, constantly getting their feedback, being a point of reference so they can feel like they can bounce ideas off you, but you can also structure it. They bounce ideas off everybody else, or you get everybody coming over to you and also building in time that's actually given back to them or given in staff meetings so they can do those things. Second part is about being able to see those benefits in their classroom. If they can see that something you put in place is making a difference and a mastery curriculum or will do this in whatever form you put it into, if you can. If they can see little Johnny couldn't do this, now suddenly he's being able to. I never thought that he could do that. That is what you will get if you choose the right vehicles and the right elements to whatever you're putting in place in leading mathematics. So that's absolutely critical. If they see the benefit of it, they're going to keep doing it. If you as a teacher are doing something piecemeal because you've been told to do it, your heart's not in it and you can't make a difference, well, it's never going to make a difference because your heart's not in it. And finally, you want to give people a sense of control. So give them some flexibility, some freedom, allow them to come back with ideas and change things slightly, as long as it's not completely changing what you're putting in place into something completely different. Let them make those mistakes like we said. Make them. As long as they're evaluating and reflecting on that, then that will work absolutely fine. One thing you could do to support all of this is have a structured series of staff meetings in place where people can come back together and reflect on what's worked and what hasn't. I'd recommend in those meetings. There is nobody who's not a teacher in those meetings in the meeting. So the focus can be purely on learning and it's not about somebody's watching. So that you don't feel that you could share as a teacher what mistakes you've made and what has and hasn't worked well. And then by having that kind of structure, a proper professional discussion in staff meetings, with time put aside to do it, yeah, it will slow down how much goes on terms of change with this change in this staff meeting, this change in this staff meeting. But embedding that and getting staff to really feel like their ideas are valued, that's critical. Leading by example, going in, supporting another teacher, teaching. So you could have a little bit of planning preparation time beforehand or giving some direction and then going and teach a class to get. Again, this requires you to be out of class. So again, it's got those considerations in your action plan that you need to put in place for monetary supply time or if you're out of class anyway, you're laughing. So you've got team teaching systems that can go in place like that. It could potentially be you going to relieve somebody else so that person can go and team teach. So it doesn't always have to be about you being the fountain of all knowledge. Yes, you've got to lead by example in your own classroom. And yes, it would be good to share that. But I am sure there is good practice going on with other teachers and you want to use those teachers to share their good practice. By doing that, you're going to give confidence to that teacher. You're also going to have the other teacher who's being observed feel less threatened because it is a peer as opposed to somebody in a leadership capacity, whatever role that is coming in and judging them. So that's really, really important, be able to move things forwards. Again, you want to start thinking about how can you do that as a system. So you're not just picking out those one or two teachers that need that extra support. You're doing it for everybody. Unless of course, you're looking at real struggling teachers. In which case you're looking at a very structured series of support by you in a leadership capacity, leading mass, potentially going down the competency route. But this is the exact opposite of what you should need to do. If you have all of those things in place and you've tried to take them on board, you've tried to do all the things we've talked about so far. So team teaching is a really good one. Observations, as we've touched on a couple of times already, don't have to be a summative judgment for a teacher. They can be developmental. So these developmental or peer to peer observations, if need be to, can be really, really vital in terms of going, okay, so we're working at the moment on building our reasoning skills. So by doing that, when we walk into classes, we should be seeing these kinds of things happening and this impact because of it. So then you or a different member of staff could go and observe different people and be able to go, okay, well I'm seeing this, but it's not making an impact. And then having that discussion with that teacher, because what they say might make you re evaluate whether it's made an impact or more likely it will say, okay, they're using that strategy in a way that's not actually benefiting. And then you or the other person can then feed that back at a staff meeting or come together in a little group and discuss it in a leadership meeting if need be. But observations don't have to be all about me versus you. It's really important when you're building this kind of we're all in it together ethos, I guess, is that you want to highlight the good practice of other stuff. So you need to think of this in a way that's not going to annoy the people who aren't getting their good practice shared whilst having the people who are having their good practice shared shared correctly. And it's not just to put a badge onto those really good people compared to those really not so good people. That's what you need to manage carefully when you're doing this. But there is absolutely good practice. There's nothing wrong at all. We're saying this strategy worked well, this one worked well. And also sharing this one didn't. Especially if it's from teachers who have previously had good practice shared. If they're happy to then share something that didn't work, then that would be even more beneficial because the more you have those kinds of discussions as a staff again in your staff meeting allocated time, a sequence of staff meetings devoted to this kind of behaviours. Amongst professional discussions, amongst your staff, that is going to be what helps you lead your subject and your staff come together empowered, knowledgeable and able to move on. But they're not going to move on without confidence. When a teacher is struggling, they question everything. They question whether they're making the right decisions in the simplest things and they sometimes want somebody else to basically tell them exactly what to do because they're that short of confidence that they actually don't know anymore. That is not what you want. If you're making change, it can't be so fast paced that everything else falls out the bottom. You need to create a culture where staff are able to take sensible, calculated risks and discuss it like we just talked about in those staff meetings that you put aside specially for this. Give them a name, call them something different so that we know as staff when we go to those staff meetings. These are the combined rules that we have and this is what we're going to discuss. So share those things that worked well, share the risks you took, share what didn't work well. And then when you're going to observe people, ask them to take a risk or two so that you can then see whether those risks are paying off. Because that's where you really start to know where new innovative practice or different practice to what is currently being done, which is innovative for that teacher is going to work or not. And that's the only way you can start to give better feedback to people as well. So creating that culture really, really important, as is believing that we are all in it together, not piecemeal, pretending that, oh yeah, we're all in together, but really, I'll just tell you what to do. It's got to be about all of your teachers believing through that ethos, being empowered, getting their views back, all of those things we've already talked about, that is absolutely critical. If they believe that they can share those things openly, in a professional, professional manner with another member of staff and get feedback from that member of staff, you are absolutely on to a winner. And that can be replicated over and over again. Whatever change processes, whatever action plans you're doing, that's what you want to be doing. And finally, you've got to be able to ask for help. And I'm not just talking about the teachers, I'm talking about you as well. As a mass leader, you need to be looking outwards, not just within your school and other members of staff, whether they're in the leadership team or not. You could be asking for help from somebody that you've got some really good ideas from when you were looking at an observation. But predominantly it's going to be about getting your staff to feel like they can ask for help and not ending up being you, always being the person to have to give that support. Yes, you want to lead by example, by doing that wherever possible, but also you don't want to make yourself so indispensable that it's you being brilliant and the fountain of all maths and everybody else trying to live up to your expectation. Because I can tell you now, you will fail to live up to that expectation because everybody has an off day when they're being observed. So because of very many different circumstances that happen. So the best thing to do is yes, you've got your expertise, you know the direction along with everybody else, you know the direction you want to leave things, you know how you're going to get there. But you've got to get your staff to ask each other for help. That's the best way. And not just within your school. Get them to be outward facing towards the communities that are available. Whether that's through social networking, whether that's throughout hours, events, whether that, whether that's through just friends who are also teachers. Getting them to be in a place where they feel like they want to share, want to get ideas from other people and then giving other people ideas as well, that's really, really important. And that together builds that confidence in the staff that it's okay if we make the odd mistake. We're not going to be absolutely killed for doing that. As long as it's not hugely negatively affecting the children's learning. I'm not doing something completely outlandish and it's only going to be a positive because it's going to move me on as a teacher, it's going to move the children on in their learning. Once I get to grips with this, how do I get to grips with this? I can ask for help. We're all in together. So I'm going to ask other people for what they do in those situations. I might go and see a member of staff, might go and observe somebody else. I might get some teaching in, I might have a look at what we, what email I got sent about somebody's good practice there. So these are the kinds of ways that you can improve teachers confidence and really build that sense that you are all in together and that we are all wanting to move in the same direction. That vision statement again, our final and very short section is all about Looking for the detail in everything we've looked at already. So to do that you want to look for the needles in the haystack. You need to find where the little things are that are not quite going right. That doesn't mean picking up on every single thing that a teacher does wrong. It means deciding is this thing that you're seeing that's not right, is it actually a bigger thing than you think it is on first sight? So for example, if you have put in place that you're going to run, each teacher is going to timetable in two or three number fact short sessions in their timetable, maybe two of your teachers haven't got it written on their timetable, you might let that go, you might not let that go. Potentially that member of staff isn't actually doing that. And if they're not, then that number fact development is not going to happen. So that's quite a big one. There's quite a big needle in a haystack. Sorting that out potentially could have a huge effect for those children in terms of their number fact development. Something that might have a smaller effect and might not be a needle that needs to be touched at all could be within one of those sessions. You see an observation of two different teachers and they're both making a very slight mistake. That's the same thing. Now you could pick that out as a gosh, if these two teachers are doing it, are other teachers doing the same mistake as well? A two second message in a staff meeting could sort that out. Email might sort that out. Feedback from observation might sort it out, or it might not be an issue. The only way you're going to find that out is by going and having a look in other places. So potentially with that example, you wouldn't say anything to the teachers apart from possibly in their feedback, in their observation. If you thought it was worthwhile, the rest would be okay. You might go and do a quick walk through somewhere else or have a quick look at books and just get. Or ask a couple of other teachers and just ask them is the easiest way. So by doing that you're picking out on those little bits of detail, deciding on when something needs to be followed up and the occasional part where you don't need to because you don't want to be bombarding teachers with lots of tiny things that they're doing wrong because we all do things wrong all the time in teaching because there's just never enough hours in the day. Teachers are going to do their best or they shouldn't be in your school. And if they are doing their best, then they're still going to have a few bits here and there that aren't quite perfect. So it's about making sure that the detail that you pick up on is for you can see an impact happening significantly in children's learning. And that's where it's always back to. It's always about impact in children's learning. So as well as the situations we've looked at just there as an example of what I mean by detail, you've got to look in your data now. You could notice a tiny little trend. You could notice that, say you were doing some mental maths tests across school, bit like the example we put in place earlier on. And what you've got there is a very slow decrease of scores over time across the board. Now that might be something that needs investigating, even though it's only very slightly, say maybe it's still in the 90s, but it's going from 97 to 95 to 92 now, potentially in a couple more terms time. If that trend continues, then that's going to be a big problem. It might only be a small thing at the moment, but it needs investigating. It needs you to spend time looking at whether it is a trend, whether there are reasons around that that should negate that being a problem, or actually do we need to tackle this proactively, preemptively, before it becomes a problem. And that's what looking at the detail can really help you do. It's be proactive and ensure that things are sorted before they become a problem. Policies and systems. Are people following those policies and systems? Yeah, you can kind of turn a blind eye to teachers, not quite following a system or two here and there. If it's not going to make a huge difference to children's learning and if you constantly picking up on that teacher is going to negatively affect their performance on a day to day basis, either through their confidence or their goodwill, which we've talked about lots in ensuring that you inspire people and take them on board with you. So the systems you can do that with. Policy needs to be followed. It's the school policy. You put that in place for a reason. It needs to be followed. And Ofsted will pick you up if people are doing things not in your policy. And it will be, it shouldn't be, but it will be your overall fault and responsibility because you are leading that subject. So you do need to check up on that. Teachers want to do the right thing unless they disagree with something and if you've given them the time already to do that, then they should be on board with it. And you will certainly know which people aren't. Either way, you can then ensure your policies are adhered to and they won't be. To start with, when you've introduced something new, it needs to be refined. Refined, picked up on, Picked up on until everyone's embedded what they want you to do. No matter how good your communication is, there will always be people who don't understand what you're trying to put in place and are either too afraid to say something, I think they understand and don't, or don't care. And hopefully through what we've talked about all the way through this, all of those can be negated and you'll be left with a lot less of that to deal with. And you've got to look for that detail in when they're teaching. So if you are seeing little things in those lessons, decide, is it something that you need to check up on? Is it happening wider? Are you seeing a trend? So are you seeing all the teachers kind of miss out a little spot starting activity that would pick up on prior learning? Have they just gone straight into the lessons? That's quite a big one. But as an example, that's the kind of thing that you would want to pick up on and assess. Is that making an impact? And start to be strategic in your thinking so that you understand whether the little details that you've seen do make an impact to children's learning. Is it going to have a negative impact? So picking out that detail is absolutely critical in terms of, as you move on past the bigger areas of the strategic, with your overall vision and direction for mathematics, once you get into the nitty gritty of your termly and monthly and yearly cycles within mathematics, are you picking up those little tiny details that are going to stop that potential impact of the systems you're putting in place to actually make that impact. So we've looked at having a clear vision and direction for your journey with where you want to take mathematics. We've looked at how to empower your staff and to take them on board with you and inspire them with what you're doing, where you're going to with mathematics. We've also looked at having a strategic overview of what's going to happen, how to put an action plan in place and then how to monitor it and what you need as part of your action plan to ensure its success and the impact on children's learning. And then we've started to just look very slightly at the details that you can pick apart to see what's worked well and to hopefully preemptively avoid any dilution of that impact that you're looking for on children's learning. So you're ready, you're good to go, you're ready for success. These are the three key areas to take out of what we've been talking about, to ensure that you are really sure about what you're doing. Moving forwards now and putting these things in place in your school. Know your journey inside out. Get your staff to know where you're going, Tell them that vision statement until they're blue in the face and get them really clear about what's going on. Motivate them. Key to everything. If they are motivated and want to go on board and go on that journey with you, you are going to be having such an easier time compared to fighting staff all the way along the journey. Better to sort any disagreements out at the start, be really clear and move on together. Finally, never be afraid to ask for help. And now I am talking to you. If you struggle with understanding something, go to people that can help you. Third space can help you. So can social networking, so can your colleagues, your peers, any mentors that you would have, and so can having the time yourself to have a think internally about what's going on and any problems you might be able to sort out. Finally, I'd like to make you aware of a resource you might find useful to move forward with what kind of big ideas we've talked about and be able to put kind of a tick list of things that's almost directed not just towards Ofsted, but also towards you as a subject leader, ensuring that you've got those things in place and your subject leadership is moving forwards in the right way. So this resource will help you do that. As I say, it's free and on Thirdspace's maths hub online, where you are now, and I'd recommend that. So thank you very much for listening. My name is Peter Richardson and I wish you all the success leading mathematics in your school.