England’s main maths teacher training centre is to double its staffing and expand into the regions.

The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) publishes resources, provides professional development and produces papers on areas such as marking guidance, textbook design and assessment.

It also coordinates the government’s Maths Hubs, which are overseeing the roll-out of the Teaching for Mastery programme - the East Asian-style of teaching the subject.

Now the NCETM, which is managed by education services group Tribal in partnership with training charity MEI, is set to double the number of people it employs.

New maths jobs

It is advertising for a director of professional development leadership - a new role, which will involve setting up development and support for those who are already leading the education of the subject in their area.

An assistant director (primary), an assistant director (secondary) and eight regional leads are also required by NCETM to support teachers across the country. All jobs will be home-based with extensive travel required.

The new posts, which are initially funded until July 2019, come in addition to other communications and business support jobs, meaning that the number of people employed at NCETM is set to increase from around 20 to 40.

There are 35 Maths Hubs in the programme overseen by the NCETM, each of which is led by a school or college.

As well as overseeing the mastery roll-out, the hubs are responsible for leading improvements in education in their area by offering free or subsidised training and information about local education activities.

Expansion work

In its latest newsletter, the Maths Hubs programme says that the expansion of their work will include: a new programme for primary schools wanting to establish strong maths leadership, a significant increase in the scale of work done in early years and an expansion in the north of England, which may include creating new hubs.

The government recently announced that maths mastery will be expanded to a further 3,000 schools on top of the original £41 million of funding announced in July 2016 for 8,000 schools.

Charlie Stripp, director of NCETM, said: “These new streams of Government funding to support school maths education represent a welcome vote of confidence in the work of the NCETM and, more importantly, in the work of the 35 Maths Hubs across England.

“The number of teachers and schools participating in Maths Hubs Programme activities has risen steadily since they were launched in 2014. Of particular note is the way that teaching for mastery approaches in maths have taken root in thousands of primary schools in England, work that we are building from and expanding in both primary and secondary schools.”

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