With more schools and colleges offering the qualification, and more students signing up the course than ever before, Core Maths is back for another year. And with more teachers delivering it for the first time, there are more opportunities for professional development to help them to do the best job that they can.
The AMSP will be running not one but two Developing Core Maths Pedagogy Work Groups within the region. The Central Maths Hub intend to run the workshops for this professional development face-to-face when possible, but the sessions will start online on Thursday 12 November 2020 and will continue across the year with a further four sessions. Origin Maths Hub’s Work Group will run purely online and commences on the same date. Although each Hub’s first session has already taken place, you can still join for the remaining sessions.
Both groups will look at approaches to maths through contextualised problem solving, a range of resources and pre-release materials, the use of technology, and how best to prepare students for examinations. Both hubs are now recruiting onto these Work Groups – those in the Birmingham area are best to sign up with Central, whilst those from the rest of the region should sign up with Origin.
The AMSP are continuing their ongoing support for teachers with their national professional development programmes. The first wave of Core Maths Online Support Groups happened during October, with teachers being given the opportunity to discuss and share their experiences, and to develop their practice around the teaching of Core Maths with teachers who are in a similar position. The second wave of these are approaching this half term, and sessions are separated into groups for each Core Maths syllabus. Teachers can also look out for the return of our Core Maths Festival in the winter and, all things being well, local, face-to-face Core Maths Teacher Workshops are coming in 2021.