Playing the long game: my summers spent as a Head of Maths

By Greg Thomas
Published 16 June 2022

Greg reflects on his summers as a Head of Maths after his students finished their GCSEs, and explores the importance of planning and preparing for the next step of their journey: A-levels.

As the Maths exams came to an end, I always likened myself to a Premiership Football Manager having to immediately start preparing them and getting them ready for the next season. Except of course, for a Head of Maths, there’s no pre-season trip to America to play in friendly matches and there is a very limited budget!

Long-term planning

My pre- or post-season – depending on which way you look at it – was to start by timetabling my staff to the groups I wanted them to teach the following year, trying to rationalise which group might be more suitable for the non-specialist teacher. (In truth, this was always a difficult decision, as I believed that everyone had the right to a Maths specialist.)

My next goal was to set up a summer school for pupils in year 6 that were coming into the school below target (this meant liaising with feeder schools) and also including some year 7 students that would benefit from it. For me, it was playing a long game – give these students the best experience of Maths possible, build up their confidence so they felt more comfortable around the school, turning them onto Maths, and letting them feel successful while creating positive relationships with Maths staff before formally starting in September. It meant that these students in particular hit the ground running.

The data analysis

Once the results were in, there was the data analysis. How had the cohort performed? How had different classes performed? Then breaking this down further to see how different classes had performed in different areas of the curriculum – did we need to re-jig the curriculum map, or was it just a case that the questions were a little harder this year? Did any of the teachers appear to need support with a particular area of the curriculum? These were some of the questions I asked myself in preparation for September.

The thing to always remember was that data didn’t provide me with answers, but did help me ask the right questions. Any strategic decisions made were supported by what I could get out of these questions and what the examiner's reports would highlight.

Summer activities

For the most able students, across all year groups, we pointed them in the direction of the Royal Institute summer classes that were put on in London, actively encouraging them to attend these enrichment opportunities. The students that attended always spoke about them very positively and started September excited.

We were also setting up packs of work for students, trying to make it as fun as possible to encourage mathematical conversation within families during the summer break. For year 10 students, for example, it was exercises and a few questions from each of the topics. We also had a couple of dates across the holidays where there was a drop-in clinic and a member of staff was available to help if students were stuck. This later changed to students emailing for help if they were stuck. The take-up wasn’t always massive, but if it helped 10 students, we were pleased, every small gain was important to us.

Even though we were an 11–16 school, we recognised the importance of the next step of a student’s journey. We linked with the sixth form college to provide students who wanted to do A-levels with bridging materials to help them be successful in the next step of Mathematics.

The mindset within the department was that you forget a lot, especially if you don’t do any maths for 6 weeks! We have to keep those mathematical muscles finely tuned, match fit if you will, ready for the new season ahead.

Appreciation is key

The summer was also an opportunity for team building, and it gave me a chance to thank my staff (normally with a gift each) in appreciation of the hard work they put in. Department BBQs, ten-pin bowling (we tried to do this monthly across the year), also provided an opportunity to blow off steam, as well as to re-enforce the shared vision of the department and the ‘we’re all in it together’ mentality. These meets or ‘hang-outs’ helped to create an open door policy where we could all drop into any maths class and support each other as well as providing an opportunity to off-load in a safe, non-threatening environment.

I was lucky, I do recognise that I had a supportive senior leadership team who saw the benefit in what we were trying to do, so I could ask for time with members of my department to set some of these things in place or to visit feeder schools. Their mindset was that good schools grow good people, a mantra I tried to pass on to my department and the students I taught.