Alison Millett

Is the National Numeracy Strategy Research‐based?

The British Government has recently agreed proposals for a National Numeracy Strategy which claims to be based on evidence concerning ‘hat works’. This article reviews the literature in each key area in which recommendations are made, and makes a judgement of whether the claim is justified. In some areas (e.g. calculators) the recommendations run counter to the evidence.

The key role of educational Research in the development and evaluation of the national numeracy strategy

The authors contest a politicians claim that the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) in English primary schools has been an undisputed success with no contribution from educational researchers. First, the key role of researchers and research in the development of the NNS is outlined. Then there is a description of the Leverhulme Numeracy Research Programme, a linked set of research studies combining a large-scale longitudinal survey and qualitative case studies. Results suggest that the NNS had a positive but small effect on numeracy standards, but that there are many schools, children and areas of mathematics for whom the effect has been negligible or negative. The discussion of reasons for this relates to evidence from the Leverhulme Programme and elsewhere about the effects of different factors on attainment. Finally, there is some question of whether government and government agencies are being completely open about the evidence of effectiveness of the NNS.

Entitlement to attainment: tensions in the National Numeracy Strategy

This article examines models of entitlement that are being encouraged through the implementation of the English National Numeracy Strategy in relation to models presented in earlier policy documents. The argument is developed that the rhetoric has moved from entitlement as access to an appropriate curriculum, through entitlement to equality of teaching experience, towards entitlement to equality of learning outcome. However, we argue that in practice models of entitlement that were differentiated as a result of perceived differences in pupils have not been replaced with models of entitlement to outcomes, but merely that later models have overlaid earlier ones. This is made evident by the mixed messages that schools and teachers are exposed to and the variety of strategies adopted in schools. We suggest this places teachers in a situation of tension: on the one hand trying to ensure all pupils reach a standard level of attainment and on the other still trying to differentiate the curriculum to meet perceived individual needs.

The Context for Change: A Model for Discussion

In this chapter we present a model for discussing the implementation of change upon which subsequent chapters will draw. Taking insights particularly from the work of Spillane (1999) and Leithwood, Jantzi and Mascall (1999), we have developed a model where context is taken as that which surrounds and influences an individual making decisions about teaching mathematics in the primary school. The situation, normally the immediate school environment, contains both the pupils and the professional community of colleagues with whom the individual works closely. More distant, but still exerting influence, are the external professionals, policy makers, the public and aspects of private sector enterprise. Critical to our model is the notion of a zone of enactment — an area of potential for professional development, the space in which the individual makes sense of reform or change initiatives in an essentially social process. We outline how work from the Leverhulme Numeracy Research Programme has given rise to a set of questions about what makes a difference in influencing the way in which change is taken on board, and indicate how these questions will be addressed in the chapters that follow.

Odd One Out? Some views of lay inspection

ABSTRACT A lay inspector is an essential part of the team conducting an Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection in England. Evidence from a small research project focusing on interpretations of policy for primary mathematics at different levels of the OFSTED system revealed some tensions and lack of clarity about the role of the lay inspector. While expressing positive feelings about many aspects of lay inspection, primary inspectors interviewed felt, on the whole, that limitations in lay inspectors’ experience of teaching and learning meant that the responsibilities allocated to them relating to subject inspection (in this case mathematics) should also be limited. But boundaries were blurred and extensive experience of lay inspection itself could bring its own, perhaps worrying, form of ‘expertise’. Concerns about variations in the quality of lay inspectors were raised by both inspectors and key personnel in schools, variations which might impact on both the process of the inspection itself...

Expertise or ‘Baggage’ ? What Helps Inspectors to Inspect Primary Mathematics?

There is an assumption that, under the Office for Standards in Education system, inspectors will, through training, learn to put aside their preferred ways of working and come to look at school practice unencumbered by ‘baggage’. Yet primary team inspectors are allocated certain subjects for inspection, based on their previous experience and, to a certain extent, their chosen preferences. The research reported here focuses on the inspection of primary mathematics and provides evidence of the potential tensions between ‘experience and expertise’, and ‘baggage’, at different levels of the inspection process. It seems that some primary inspectors are less aware of problems arising from lack of expertise than of those arising from preferences for particular teaching styles or methods. It may be the case that the greater the expertise, the more likely it is that judgements will be related to mathematical criteria, rather than merely to general teaching criteria—is this then still baggage?

Expectations of the primary mathematics coordinator: demands and tensions within the role

Abstract The development of ‘Using and Applying Mathematics’, introduced through the Mathematics National Curriculum in England and Wales in 1989, presented a challenge to even the most confident of mathematics coordinators. The article looks at how a coordinator in a school where the decision had been made to develop this complex and difficult aspect of mathematics responded to the demands of her task, and the implications this had for whole-school development. The coordinator is a key player in school development and the holder of this post has taken on increasing responsibilities in recent years. The tension between expectations and resources in this primary school illustrate the complex and demanding nature of the role, bridging, as it does, individual and collective responses to innovation and change.

The Mediating Role of Textual Materials in Teachers’ Response to Calls for Classroom Reform

This chapter examines how the introduction of the National Numeracy Strategy impacted on planning for mathematics at the level of the whole school and the individual teacher. In its initial training the Strategy encouraged schools nationally to open up their planning to include a wider range of materials. It is argued here that decisions about the choice of materials to use when planning the daily mathematics lesson had the potential to act as a conduit for professional development. On an individual level for a few teachers this proved to be case. At a collective level this potential was realised for some teachers planning collaboratively, but not where issues of efficacy in terms of time and duplication of effort were felt to militate against joint planning activities. Despite an initial push by government to encourage teachers to plan from a range of materials, the subsequent publication of ready-made lesson plans, available electronically on the web, brings government’s commitment to promoting planning as a professional development opportunity into question.

Responses of teachers to a course of intensive training

In this chapter, the spotlight is on that part of our model that includes the person within their immediate professional community responding to an external intervention, and has links mainly with the external professional and policy. The policy in this case emanates from the National Numeracy Strategy in the form of a Five-day course covering aspects of mathematics content and pedagogy, delivered by professionals external to the schools. Twelve teachers in four schools were interviewed and observed to explore their subject knowledge, orientations and beliefs and classroom practice. Eight of these teachers experienced the Five-day course in 2000/01, with three more attending at a later date. This chapter discusses how the first eight teachers responded to this professional development, both initially and over the longer term; how they took influences from the course into their own classrooms; how they prepared to feed back their ideas to their colleagues in school and how this feedback was received. The degree to which this in-service training provided the constituents of effective professional development is also critically examined.

Dancing to whose tune?: Conflicting priorities for primary schools

Focusing on ‘Whole school action on Numeracy’, research began in six primary schools undergoing an Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection during the year September 1997 to 1998, as part of the Leverhulme Numeracy Research Programme. The Numeracy Task Force was working during that time to prepare the Numeracy Strategy with its implementation date of September 1999. Schools were aware that this was coming, but had the major innovation of the National Literacy Strategy to implement in September 1998. This paper reports on the ways in which three major outside constraints — OFSTED inspection with its attendant Action Plan, a national focus on Literacy and the impending National Numeracy Strategy — caused conflicts for schools as they planned action to raise attainment in numeracy.