Matthew Hancock speaks about reforms to vocational education

From:

Department for Education and Matthew Hancock MP

Delivered on:  20 June 2014 at Wellington College.

 

BBC News Article Sept 2013.  Teenagers have to keep studying English and maths

By Sean Coughlan

This report looks at CPD for maths teachers and why there is a need to develop more maths teachers.  There is a useful summary and list of recommendations at the start of the report.

This is a ‘professional’ review resulting from a ‘practitioner’ inquiry conducted by a number of mathematics teacher educators and researchers into the initial and continuing education of mathematics teachers. Unfortunately it is school based, although still an interesting read with many applications to FE

2010 Guardian article which discusses the Maths Enhancement Project and the development of maths 'hub' created from the project in 2014

Careful consideration should be given to individual's skills, attitudes and pedagogical expertise when analysing appropriate CPD.  Further study should be made of participants of both the MEP and L3 Award and their summative assessment of how ready they feel to teach GCSE maths (at either foundation or higher level).  Equally managers could analyse future results and any correlation with qualifications of the teachers involved and student achievement.  Completing the MEP before the L3 Award or vice-versa, would facilitate skills development for participants, but neither qualification could be nested within the other or used as a preparatory course or follow-on programme as both require additional topics to be studied.

CPD opportunities for maths teachers include MEP, L3 Award, Coaching or mentoring qualifications, L5 Subject specialist qualifications or undertaking the study of the GCSE qualification themselves.  Decisions will need to be made on a case by case basis, but all will require support (and time) from the employing organisation and commitment and self-study by participants.

The MEP and L3 award have core areas that are similar and both assume 'secure and confident' level 2 skills before starting the programmes.

There are many on-line resources to support maths skills development.  Many are multimodal and interactive, but study and construction of conceptual understanding requires time and commitment from people using the materials.

The MEP programme develops pedagogy for maths teachers.  For the L3 award this will depend on the approach taken by the teacher for the programme.

Time constraints for the research did not allow for the CPD session to be used with managers or practitioners to see if it did help with decision making about maths CPD. The MEP was also still being delivered and some participants had also completed the L3 award, so it would have been interesting to ask these 'students' to compare and contrast the two programmes, especailly as they had been delivered by the same advanced practitioner, thus creating a 'control factor' in the research.

Analysis of programme evaluations by MEP and L3 Award participants and their 'measure' of their 'readiness' may also give an indication of the success of these CPD routes.