As hard as schools try to make maths less scary, it is frequently approached with fear and anxiety. This often takes the form of jokey dismissals and exclamations of “I just can’t do it”. But when this is a message coming from parents, not just pupils, the effect can be particularly damaging.

When this occurred at their primary school, Emma Cate Stokes and her colleagues decided to take matters into their own hands and give mathematically reluctant families a way to engage with the subject, removing the obstacles that were preventing them from supporting children with their learning. She tells Tes how they did it.

Why do you think some parents struggle to engage with maths?

There seems to be an acceptance within society that it is OK to be “bad at maths” and, because parents can sometimes buy into this, that does have an impact on children’s willingness to learn. Alongside this, many parents and carers worry that they will give their child the wrong answer or create potential problems for them in their learning.

But the most common struggle I’ve encountered as a maths lead is their lack of understanding of the mastery approach, which is increasingly popular in primary but can feel alien to those who grew up being taught maths in an entirely different way.

What effect does this lack of engagement have on pupils’ maths learning?

Some pick up maths anxiety from their parents, leading to a real reluctance to engage fully with maths learning. It can also lead to potential misconceptions before the child even enters the classroom. For instance, if they’ve been taught the “zeros trick” for dividing by 10, but have no conceptual understanding behind it, then it leads to further gaps in knowledge down the line.

How big is the problem?

It will vary from school to school, but lockdown highlighted how much parents and carers across the country have struggled with the mastery approach. There have been articles in national newspapers asking if seven-year-olds are being trained for Nasa, and various memes poking fun at the approach because adults find it so confusing.

To counter this, you decided to teach maths to parents. How?

I began this pre-Covid - I wanted to ensure that parents and carers were fully engaged with their children’s learning, so everything revolved around working collaboratively with them. I wanted to get across that we were a partnership.

The first thing I did was set up workshops to detail exactly what the mastery approach was. These were held during the school day and in the evening to ensure maximum engagement. So many parents and carers entered the workshops feeling insecure and nervous, but they left with smiles on their faces when they realised that maths could be fun and challenging in an exciting way.

I modelled the importance of having a positive attitude towards maths and the impact this has on children. Those sessions were about increasing the comfort level for adults who, up until that point, had a negative relationship with maths.

Alongside this, every year group would take home a how-to guide at the beginning of each maths unit, detailing all the vocabulary and manipulatives being used in the classroom. Children that we felt would benefit from having concrete manipulatives took resource bags home and parents were taught how to engage with them.

Then we began half-termly, year-group-specific workshops for parents and carers, going over the learning that would take place during lessons and how they could offer support to their children.

These were particularly successful because they were tailored to the needs of each year group and meant we could zero in on explaining how the maths in that class would look. It benefited the parents of all classes in ways specific to their context.

For parents of children in Reception class, understanding the importance of early maths, and how integral that continued support is, had a huge impact. In upper key stage 2, where the mathematical content becomes increasingly demanding, this was particularly helpful for parental understanding.

Have you found that some parents have been harder to reach than others?

There will always be parents and carers who are trickier to reach. People have their own stories and experiences when it comes to school and maths, and they can only begin to build up trust when the heart of that has been addressed.

Gentle, positive encouragement and praise are effective, and relationships are everything. If I have hard-to-reach parents or carers, I get to know them.

Offering one-to-one sessions designed to build up subject knowledge for those who may lack the confidence to come to a group workshop is a positive way of showing you value the individual.

What other challenges have you had to overcome?

Childcare was an issue for some parents and carers, so we ensured there were adults available to look after any children who were coming to the sessions with them. Teachers and teaching assistants were given time to facilitate these sessions and cover was arranged for their classes.

For parents and carers who work shifts, it has been important to offer alternatives, such as one-to-one appointments or phone calls after school, as part of the teacher’s directed time.

How successful has your approach been?

The most frequent feedback I received from parents and carers was that they now understood what they were doing and were able to work with their children. So many parents and carers talked about the joy of finally being able to be the expert when their child was completing homework.

The comments that stand out the most for me are the ones from adults who now enjoy maths. A big part of the approach is changing attitudes.

A child seeing a caregiver positively reacting to maths is more likely to have a positive attitude themselves.

Of course, Covid stopped a lot of this work in its tracks. However, what stood out was the high standard of engagement in online maths lessons and in the work completed by children across the school. The effort put into parental collaboration really paid off and maths consistently had one of the highest levels of engagement across online learning.

What advice would you give to other schools that might want to replicate this approach?

Don’t expect change overnight; this approach took time. Small incremental steps that make parents and carers feel comfortable are far more effective than trying to enact overnight changes.

The most important thing is that there is a whole-school approach to parental collaboration and that all staff are singing from the same hymn sheet. It can’t be a box-ticking exercise - it has to be part of the very fabric of the school.

Emma Cate Stokes teaches and leads KS1 at a primary school in East Sussex. She tweets @emmccatt and blogs at emmacateteaching.com

This article originally appeared in the 2 April 2021 issue under the headline “How I...gave reluctant parents the maths bug”