Maths Mastery in Regent International School, Dubai

‘Maths Mastery’ – the latest buzz word that is flying around British Curriculum schools, not only in Dubai, London, but across the world. What is it?

Many people have their own interpretation, but for me as a teacher I take my guidance about what ‘Maths Mastery’ is from the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Maths. Mr. Charlie Stripp, Director of NCETM, has outlined in his blog a concise definition of what Mastery should look like when you see it in a classroom.

Countries employing a mastery approach expose almost all of the children to the same curriculum content at the same pace, allowing them full access to the curriculum by focusing on developing deep understanding and securing fluency with facts and procedures, and providing differentiation by offering rapid support and intervention to address each individual pupil’s needs.

An approach based on mastery principles:

• • makes use of mathematical representations that expose the underlying structure of the mathematics;

• • helps children to make sense of concepts and achieve fluency through carefully structured questions, exercises and problems that use conceptual and procedural variation to provide ‘intelligent practice’, which develops conceptual understanding and procedural fluency in parallel;

• • blends whole class discussion and precise questioning with intelligent practice and, where necessary, individual support. (Stripp)[1]

Mr. Padraig Carr
Year 6 Teacher

[1] STRIPP, Charlie. (Mastery in mathematics: What it is and why we should be doing it), https://www.ncetm.org.uk/resources/45776