More than 100 maths teachers will take part in a series of innovative workshops designed to inspire them to teach their subject in more creative and challenging ways. They all teach in schools in disadvantaged areas.

The Teacher Inspiration Days are being held as part of a £1.2m Fast Forward Maths programme, funded by the Goldman Sachs Foundation and run by the University of Cambridge’s Millennium Mathematics Project.

The first of three professional development days being held throughout the year takes place in Cambridge on Friday 24 October and is aimed at maths teachers of Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 who work in maintained-sector schools throughout the UK. The professional development course has been significantly oversubscribed, with more than 25% more applications than places available.

These days complement a programme aimed at year 10 children which includes three residential study schools at Cambridge backed up by online learning and e-mentoring. Priority is given to students from areas of socio-economic deprivation, schools with lower than average academic achievement, ethnic minority backgrounds and families which have no previous history of higher education. By working both with children and teachers, the aim is to have a sustained impact on the educational experience of current and future students.

Recent UK Government’s schools inspectorate reports on 14-19 mathematics teaching have stated that almost half the schools in the UK are not teaching the subject well. They identify a national lack of mathematics lessons with “sufficient flair, imagination and challenge to get the best from students" and to allow pupils to develop their "ability to reason and discover solutions for themselves".

The professional development days will help teachers meet these goals. They will also include guidance on using the innovative and creative resources freely available through the Millennium Maths project’s NRICH website (www.nrich.maths.org), giving teachers a huge resource bank of potential enrichment activity. Teachers will also be encouraged to share ideas gained on the development days with colleagues as well as to implement the strategies learned when they return to their own classrooms.

Jonathan Love, a maths teacher at Comberton Village School in Cambridgeshire who is taking part in the Teacher Inspiration Day next week, said: “No matter how long I teach I’m always on the look out for fresh ways to engage and interest my students. I hope the course will also provide plenty of opportunity to try out/discuss/adapt the problems so that I feel confident and keen to try them out in class soon after I get back to school.”

Professor John Barrow FRS, Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the University’s Millennium Mathematics Project, said: “The aim of the Teacher Inspiration professional development programme is to support and enable mathematics teachers who are committed to nurturing confident, resourceful and enthusiastic learners, deepening teachers’ subject knowledge and introducing them to new resources and innovative classroom practice.”

Each Teacher Inspiration event will be a full day with a mix of plenary speaker sessions and intensive hands-on workshops. The days will be highly interactive and will respond to the issues and concerns raised by teachers, but will include issues such as building students’ confidence and challenging high attainers as well as information about applying to Cambridge. The next two Inspiration Days will be held on 19 March and 3 July 2009.

The days will link together with participants encouraged to try out and share ideas between sessions. Teachers are therefore being encouraged to attend all three days of the programme.

The Fast Forward Maths programme will run for three years. It is the first time Cambridge has run a subject-specific residential programme over such a lengthy period. It will be run by two award-winning divisions of the University of Cambridge: the NRICH Project, which is part of the Millennium Mathematics Project, and the Group to Encourage Ethnic Minority Applications (GEEMA), which is part of the Widening Participation Team in the Cambridge Admissions Office.

The NRICH website has been providing free on-line resources as part of the Millennium Mathematics Project for over a decade. The aim of the Millennium Mathematics Project is to provide world-class, outstanding enrichment activities for maths students nationally and internationally.

Stephanie Bell-Rose, President of The Goldman Sachs Foundation, said, "The Goldman Sachs Foundation supports initiatives that give promising young people from underserved backgrounds access to programs that will help them develop the academic and leadership skills needed to succeed in leading universities and, ultimately, in their careers. Quantitative skills are critical to their educational and professional success. We are pleased to support this effort to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics in the United Kingdom."

 

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