Education Endowment Foundation

Mathematics is essential for everyday life and a foundation for careers in technology, science, and engineering, among many others. Improving the attainment of children in mathematics is a founding aim of the EEF and we have funded trials of many projects in this area in both primary and secondary schools, as well as in early years and post-16 settings.

Our maths guidance report summarises the best available evidence at KS2 and KS3.

Our Toolkit provides evidence summaries for teaching and learning strategies – such as Metacognition and self-regulation and Feedback – that can be effectively applied to teaching maths.

Many secondary schools use ‘setting or streaming’ in maths – grouping students in classes according to their prior attainment – though the evidence suggests that this approach can widen attainment gaps. Schools which continue to group pupils by prior attainment should monitor carefully the impact that it has on all their pupils.

The results of EEF-funded projects focusing on maths provide useful evidence for schools looking to invest in specific interventions. There are six maths-focused projects listed as EEF Promising Projects which you can access below. Two promising projects that have been tested at efficacy and effectiveness level are:

• Mathematical reasoning, which focused on teaching the logical principles of maths in Key Stage 1 and included resources and computer games. In our first trial it had a positive impact on maths outcomes for the pupils involved and teachers found the intervention straightforward to implement. The EEF funded a larger trial to test the implementation of the programme at scale, and there was a smaller but still positive impact. Together, these trials provide evidence for the effectiveness of Mathematical Reasoning.
• Tutor Trust – Affordable Tutoring. The Tutor Trust provide affordable tuition to primary and secondary schools by recruiting and training university students as paid tutors. We ran a trial for Year 6 pupils in disadvantaged schools who were working below age-expected levels, and found students receiving tutoring from Tutor Trust made an additional 3 months progress compared to the control group. They currently work in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.