On Thursday 4th June 2025, the Welsh education inspectorate Estyn published a thematic report into standards of mathematics teaching and leadership in schools across Wales. It was entitled Unlocking potential: Insights into improving teaching and leadership in mathematics education. Its findings were based on evidence seen since 2022.
Whilst the report commendably identifies and exemplifies good practice of maths teaching in Wales, it finds that “the quality of teaching of mathematics was too variable and pupils’ standards in mathematics were too low” and “too often teachers have a limited understanding of the best ways to support pupils’ learning” and “in a majority of cases, pupils’ progress was limited by aspects of poor teaching”. These are alarming statements and yet I am not surprised.
Last year I wrote here about Wales’ mathematical education policy and standards over the past 20 years. In this period, Wales fell to its lowest every PISA score, below the other UK nations and below the OECD average. Repeated reports by Welsh Gov, Estyn and others highlighted areas of concern and yet policies and initiatives repeatedly failed to remedy the situation. This latest thematic report shows than no progress has been made and that we are in danger of falling further behind other countries and ultimately failing Welsh children. Add to this the current funding crisis in schools, a perceived deterioration in the behaviour of students, and a recruitment and retention crisis. Where is the outrage of the position we find ourselves in? Where are the drastic ideas to remedy our situation? Who will turn around our history of failure?
In this thematic report, Estyn make recommendations to Welsh Gov, local authorities and school improvement partners, senior school leaders, heads of maths and maths teachers. The recommendations are sensible, if a little conservative in my opinion. Some of the recommendations call on Welsh Gov to address some of the concerns raised about the new Curriculum for Wales (CfW). One recommendation that resonates with me in that Welsh Gov should “provide schools with more detail of expectations for pupil progress in mathematics and numeracy to support teachers with their curriculum planning”. It does seem sub-optimal that every maths department in Wales is currently designing their own GCSE curriculum, without necessarily having the time, support, specialism or guidance required. I would be in favour of a much more prescriptive curriculum, fixed exam entry timings, and a series of high quality textbooks to support teaching and learning.
I would also encourage Welsh Gov to reflect on the initiatives that we have seen working in other countries (including, dare I say, England). Welsh Gov’s CfW and ‘Made for Wales’ qualifications seem to suggest that Maths in Wales should be inherently different. Whilst I agree that local context could be used for analysing data, and that Wales’ contribution to the Maths world (π and more) should be celebrated, Maths is a universal language. We can be fairly sure that we know the best methods of Mathematics sequencing, teaching and assessment; so why not use tried and tested approaches seen in other countries?
Another recommendation made is “Consider approaches to promoting mathematics teaching as a career”. This doesn’t sound urgent enough to me. We have non-specialists teaching maths in many schools across the country, and targets for Maths ITEs are continually being missed. Some heads of department I speak to have no applicants when advertising for a maths teacher. And the standards of those we are managing to recruit also needs to be raised. It is rare now for my department to have an ITE student on placement with us who has a Maths rich degree from a good university. It is now surely time for a drastic re-think how we attract and keep the best talent to teach maths.
Welsh Gov do seem aware of the problems and provided an update in 2024 to their Mathematics and Numeracy Plan published in 2023. To me it seems underwhelming based on the scale of the problem. There has been a £4.6 million investment by Welsh Gov in its grant support programme – details here.
I hope that this latest report kickstarts some real improvement in Maths education in Wales. There is no shortage of willing with dedicated teachers and students working hard up and down the country.
Geomaths 