“I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed,” wrote Marco Polo in the 13th century. He’s obviously not the only westerner to be dazzled by the beliefs and practices of the Far East. More than 700 years later, it is the turn of schools minister Nick Gibb, who took a trip to China back in March. Like Polo, he had many a tale to tell on his return.

Also, like Polo, he is yet to convince many teachers of the validity of the tales. Gibb returned to the UK intent on introducing the Shanghai approach to maths - the so-called mastery approach - to our schools. It has been drip fed into a few classrooms since, but things are about to be ramped up: he has recently pledged an extra £41 million to roll out the “mastery approach” to mathematics in at least 8,000 primary schools across England.

His argument is that we’re lagging behind in maths compared with those nations leading the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) rankings, so we should mimic the pedagogy that has made those at the top so successful.

But with teachers disorientated by a maelstrom of relentless reform, can this latest bright idea really bring about the “renaissance in maths teaching” that Gibb promises? Many have questioned whether the approach can work here and some have asked whether what they see as an inflexibly utilitarian “Gradgrindian” system is even welcome. Others simply don’t believe the system is all it is cracked up to be.

A bigger problem, perhaps, is that very few classroom teachers actually understand what maths mastery is. If they did understand it, my guess is there wouldn’t be nearly as much fuss. You see, what Gibb is proposing makes a lot of sense.

The trouble with our system

Education has a bad habit of either adopting straightforwardly pseudoscientific nonsense or taking good ideas, declaring them a panacea and then emphatically ruining them.

Over the past few years, Carol Dweck’s insightful work on the different mindsets of students has been more or less bastardised beyond the point of saving. Even the latest drive to make the profession more evidence-based has descended, in many quarters, to self-righteous finger-wagging and further entrenchment in polarised ideology.

“Mastery” as a pedagogical concept is in danger of falling into this trap, becoming the latest flash-in-the-pan fad on the conveyer belt of trendy ideas that quickly take hold in classrooms. Already, the term is at risk of semantic vacuity, with definitions varying wildly among different teachers. To properly understand it, we need to tease apart three things: what a mastery curriculum looks like; how a mastery teacher instructs the class; and what role assessment plays in the whole system. Although intertwined, these are all subtly different elements of an approach which, if thoughtfully implemented, could reverse England’s lamentable performance in world rankings.

Make no bones about it: a transformation in the way we teach maths is sorely needed and long overdue. Attending a maths training session provided by the local authority a few years ago, I was subjected to an hour-long session on how to teach probability in an “engaging and entertaining” manner. The facilitator showed us two tins of baked beans and a can of dog food. After a game show-style mixing of the cans in a large black bag, the facilitator opened up the dog food, took a spoonful, and then gobbled it down.

Then, over the next 10 minutes, our guide explained to us how to remove the labels off tins of cooked meatballs and replace them with old dog-food labels. In the politest tone I could muster, I raised my hand and asked whether there was a clearer way of getting the nuts and bolts of probability across, since it was a concept my kids often struggle with.

“Trust me,” he said with a wink, “the children will love it when you eat the ‘dog food’. ”

I’m sure they will, I thought, but I was more interested in teaching them some maths.

It isn’t only dodgy methods that plague maths classrooms. The ever-raising stakes of Sats results means that teachers are increasingly “teaching to the test”, sometimes basing entire units of work on past questions. With mounting pressure to achieve national benchmarks, and the prospect of Ofsted hanging over headteachers like the sword of Damocles, it is inevitable that skittish Year 6 teachers take this “safe option”. I’m ashamed to say that I did it myself last year, relying more heavily on Testbase than any other resource in the run up to the Year 6 tests.

The conspicuous absence of any real rise in international standards, though, demonstrates that you could improve exam performance without improving real understanding.

Compounding these errors was an ideological commitment enforced by the previous national curriculum, and implicitly encouraged by the national inspectorate. An emphasis on collaboration, active learning and demonstrating “rapid and sustained progress” meant that a classroom of children silently working through a list of equations was likely to be met with a disapproving frown. In short, children were rushed through shallow material too quickly. They were not mastering the basics.

This ultra-personalised approach to learning undoubtedly contributed to the egregious workload levels that have dominated the profession over the past five years. Worse than this, though, it failed to translate into results for children, with the UK stubbornly languishing way down the international rankings for maths (in the Pisa rankings, the UK is at 26 for maths, while Shanghai is at number 1).

This global perspective was taken into account, for the first time, by the authors of the new national curriculum in 2010, when they compared what we teach with the top-performing nations across the world. Tim Oates, the chair of the expert panel that reviewed the national curriculum in 2010-2013, explained a key difference between our previous curriculum and those of high-performing countries around the world. What the top nations had in common, he found, was that children, particularly in primary, studied fewer things in greater depth. In contrast, our children were subjected to a crowded curriculum and rushed through it at an inappropriate pace. Assessment using levels, which were dropped on the panel’s recommendation, played a key role in this process of moving children on before they had really gained a secure understanding of fundamental concepts.

The solution?

So how does mastery fix all this? Instead of children racing through different tasks and activities, mastery calls for all eyes on the front. Although some baulk at the idea of whole-class teaching, I’ll admit that I find this more straightforward approach attractive.

Teachers are encouraged to break down basic concepts, such as two-digit column addition, and explicitly teach each step to successfully complete the calculation. Skilful modelling of the concepts, using concrete and pictorial resources, ensure that children understand not just how to complete the algorithm but why 6 + 5 requires regrouping to the tens column. Purposeful practice until procedural fluency is acquired (ie, doing lots of sums in silence) is another key element of the pedagogy.

Whether or not you agree with his policies, it is undeniable that Nick Gibb has done his research

Understandably, there are many teachers, already concerned at an erosion of autonomy in the classroom, who find this latest development overly prescriptive. They argue that heavily detailed - sometimes even scripted - lesson plans demonstrate a lack of trust and rob teachers of the opportunity to take innovative and creative approaches to maths. And the idea of children working through an approved textbook (another key feature of mastery programmes) makes many nauseous. According to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011, only 10 per cent of maths teachers in England use a textbook for core teaching compared with more than 70 per cent of teachers in the lauded maths capital, Singapore.

It may be surprising to learn, though, that in Finland, heralded as the progressive success story of recent times, more than 95 per cent of maths teachers use textbooks.

Whether or not you agree with the policies of the Department for Education, it is undeniable that Gibb has done his research. Influenced heavily by ED Hirsch, the man who wrote Cultural Literacy, Gibb has made no secret of his attraction to a knowledge-based, whole-class transmission model of education. And he has statistics that add real power to his convictions: Pisa showed a three-year difference between the performance in maths of English pupils and children in Shanghai.

This studied approach to educational policy seems to be paying off, even winning over previous detractors. Ian Davies, director of secondary at Mathematics Mastery responded to a recent speech with a blog post that began with an apology for agreeing with the minister (“Those who know me may be quite surprised to hear me say this…”) before going on to concede that “it was refreshing to hear such precise, considered arguments in a political speech” and that he “agreed with many of the things [Gibb] said”.

It isn’t possible to argue against the success of Asian countries. But can we attribute spectacular grades to the mastery model ready to dominate our classrooms?

The challenges

Lucy Crehan, a teacher and author who spent a year visiting the best schools across the world, isn’t so sure that maths mastery alone can bring us success in maths. We should be wary of cultural differences, she argues, and shouldn’t assume that simply “lifting” an educational approach and jamming it into our system will replicate the successes of the host country. More ambitious family expectations, a belief that hard work pays off and a staggering number of hours of study are all likely to contribute to the success of the average Asian student.

Even with these barriers, though, the adoption of the mastery approach here looks promising. A longitudinal study conducted by Sheffield Hallam University was positive in its evaluation of the government’s recent China exchange programme, which brought 59 Shanghai maths teachers to 48 English primary schools to model mastery teaching.

However, they also noted that our schools were already making extensive changes to what they had learnt from the Shanghai pedagogy. The Sheffield Hallam researchers expressed concern that the “risk in an adaptive approach is that the scope of change is not well defined and may lead to continuation of existing practices under new descriptions or changes that are not well aligned with the intended mastery approach”.

This chimed with my own conversations with primary teachers. The trouble is, if you ask 20 teachers what mastery means to them, you’ll receive 20 different definitions. I know this because I recently did exactly that, running a vox pop over Twitter asking for teachers’ definitions of mastery. Out of dozens of responses, no two were the same. What they had in common, if anything, was their banality: ensure all children have a deep understanding; won’t forget what they’re learning; can do something without thinking about it too much; no gaps in knowledge, and so on.

These are hard to argue with, but hardly provide any insight. I mean, when did any teacher not believe in these things?

Others are simply more wary of the change. For many teachers, the term mastery is a Trojan Horse for a return to Gradgrindian “drill-and-kill” methods, with rote learning followed by repetitive and boring equations. This regurgitation of facts, they argue, actually turns children off maths and fails to provide them with “real” understanding of the concepts at hand.

A second group, ironically, object to mastery for precisely the opposite reason. A focus on the use of concrete aids - such as Dienes (base 10) blocks, Numicon and bead strings - before moving on to pictorial and only then abstract work means that children never develop the lightning recall of key number facts necessary to become truly proficient at maths.

With such deep confusion around the methods and purposes of mastery education, teacher beliefs may well represent the biggest obstacle to its successful adoption in classrooms across the country.

But the opinions of teachers aren’t the only problem with implementing the approach; there is a huge disparity in the amount of planning time that these specialist Chinese teachers receive to prepare and refine their lessons. No wonder they are so dazzling, you’d be justified in objecting: it’s not fair to demand the results while withholding the resources.

There is clearly still much work to do in order to win hearts and minds, and adequately explain just what mastery does (and just as importantly, doesn’t) mean.

The future

This is why the £41 million cash injection from the DfE should be welcomed. The money will be used to train hundreds more primary school teachers in mastery methods, led by 35 maths “hubs”; schools already demonstrating excellence in the approach. The work will be overseen by the universally respected National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics, and will result in more than 8,000 primary schools rolling out the programme.

Whether we like it or not, before long, the government’s vision of whole-class interactive teaching will become a familiar scene in primary classrooms across the country. Lessons will be designed to put an emphasis on precise, targeted questioning and incremental progression.

The trouble is, if you ask 20 teachers what mastery means, you’ll get 20 different definitions

Those already doing it say it is not as scary as it may seem. Jonny Walker, a primary teacher at one of the host schools for the China exchange, was very positive about what he saw from the Shanghai teachers.

“We were really impressed with the craft that goes into their delivery,” he said. “Each teaching point is so clearly and analytically considered. We learned a lot from them.”

Of course, it is difficult to see the rise of mastery as anything other than the death of the favoured “child-led learning” approach that teachers in the UK have become used to. And given the current political landscape, it seems very unlikely that the government’s plans for education will be altered or reversed. A Labour government any time soon looks unlikely, and even if they were to take power, there would likely be little appetite for further changes to how schools are run.

But I am not worried. I’m quietly optimistic about this pedagogic revolution and look forward to embracing the approach to help raise the attainment of my children and transform them into confident, successful mathematicians. If we hope to reap the rewards that mastery promises, though, the promise of extra training, support and most importantly, time, will be crucial.

For Jonny Walker, this final point is the crux: “It would be great to be given the time to work in this way but, of course, the expectations on primary teachers are very different between the two systems.”

Jon Brunskill is head of Year 2 at Reach Academy Feltham. He tweets @jon_brunskill