Enhancing Teaching and Alleviating Workload with Complete Maths CLASSROOM

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Sir James Smith's School

The Challenge

St. Augustine's RC High School, in Edinburgh, faced a critical challenge at the end of the Christmas term 2021. Staff shortages left classes uncovered, demanding a quick and sustainable solution to ensure a quality education for every student.

Fraser Seywright, Curriculum Leader Mathematics & Numeracy, whose goal is to raise mathematical confidence and competence for all, recalls the dilemma: "Trying to spread everyone across more classes wasn't going to work. It's not a healthy, sustainable way to run things."

The Solution

The school's hunt for a solution led them to .

Already familiar with , the team recognised the need for a tool that could provide consistency and support for non-math specialist teachers covering classes. Fraser highlighted the importance of having "access to high-quality resources" to ensure a continuous and coherent learning experience for students.

The adoption of not only addressed the immediate staffing challenge but also paved the way for a more dynamic and effective teaching approach.

The platform's ready-made resources offer the teachers a repository of high-quality materials that align with the Scottish maths curriculum

"On the platform, having the specific Scottish maths curriculum is really beneficial. We don't have to try to map over a Key Stage 2 or a GCSE level, it's quite clear."

As the school year progressed, the usage of the platform evolved. While some teachers appreciated the convenience of pre-made resources, others delved into the Readiness quizzes.

Fraser notes the importance of these quizzes, especially in assessing students' understanding and guiding lesson plans. The flexibility of the platform allowed teachers to tailor their approaches, fostering autonomy in the classroom.

Increasing the Benefits

Acknowledging workload concerns in the education sector, Fraser shares “one of the biggest pieces of feedback, that not just we're getting here but you hear across the country at the moment, is workload and teacher burnout… using CLASSROOM, teachers can focus on how they're actually going to teach a topic and how that's going to have an impact on young people."

In comparison to traditional methods, Fraser says that has had a transformative impact. The platform streamlined resource access, minimising duplication of efforts among teachers. Fraser described the Complete Maths customer support and onboarding process as "first class" and “really supportive” and the interactive nature of it unveiled the platform's vast potential.

To Conclude

We’re absolutely delighted to say that Fraser wholeheartedly recommends to others, emphasising its long-term value. Reflecting on the journey, he offers a personal insight: "I would and have recommended the platform to others” and “whenever I talk about it with another colleague at another school, they always have a question. Does it do this? And nine times out of 10 the answer is yeah, you can do that. And the more the questions asked, the more we see that this is a pretty powerful platform.”

And, on a final reflective note, Fraser says that he wishes that he had invested in Complete Maths when they first heard about it and not just done it as a reactive purchase, once things had became really tough and schools closed, “we had set-up Microsoft teams etc. and if we just invested in Complete Maths before that, we would have been much better prepared”