In the last week alone, I have heard an Ofsted inspector call for maths teachers to move to mixed ability teaching and an apparent ‘official’ government body insist that all pupils within a year group should always be learning the same mathematical concepts.

This has been pretty much a weekly occurrence now for the last year or so.

The explanation must be, of course, the striking new evidence that mixed ability teaching in mathematics is more impactful than teaching maths classes in sets, where learning content is targeted at the point in the journey through mathematics that each set has reached, right? There could be no other logical or defensible reason for such influential bodies to call on schools across the country to undertake such a huge change in their pedagogy, curriculum planning, teaching methods, staffing, timetabling, resourcing or fundamental beliefs, right?

I have been in this game a while now. I have the great privilege of working with mathematics educators around the world and visiting schools of all types. Invariably, whenever I meet a maths teacher or teacher educator, I learn something new about mathematics teaching. I love this. I am a bit of a knowledge junkie – I am absolutely addicted to learning. I also love having my views, opinions and thoughts challenged, so that I must consider why I believe something to be true and either change my views based on new information or defend my views because they are well founded and right. I love debate, love having my perspective shaken. I read everything. As a long-term sufferer of awful insomnia, I spend most of my nights, lying next to my snoring better half, reading, reading and reading.

The story of the history of mathematics education in England is also the story of a country moving from a largely laissez-faire position to a dictatorial one. Since the 1858 Newcastle report, mathematics education has changed from a system of great diversity to a highly uniform system controlled from the centre. It is also the story of a battle: a long and far reaching fight for dominance between a mathematics education that focusses on the procedural and one that focusses on the conceptual.

In January 2011, I left my director role at Tribal Group and retired. For whatever reasons – more luck than judgement – I found myself at a time and place in my life with no need to make any more money. Since being diagnosed with cancer in 2006, my other half had continually badgered me to give up work. We had the means to do whatever we wanted. Daily I would be told that we should travel, rest, enjoy ourselves, do all the things we had spoken about doing in life. But, as a complete workaholic, the very thought filled me with terror. So, I threw myself back into work, both at Tribal and the property firm I co-own with my best friend. Following years of pleading, I finally relented. 2011 was a most unusual year – no work, no pressure, no demands on me. We did travel – a heck of a lot – and had a lot of fun. To my surprise, after the initial restlessness, I actually started to enjoy the laid-back lifestyle and became genuinely open to the idea of never working again.

My office is just off Old Street Station. The area throngs with Shoreditch hipsters and naïve privileged kids using daddy’s money to fund yet another start up. Their lives look like magazine covers and their worries sum to getting their hair to stick just right or finding someone selling truly authentic, ethical coffee. Life is good, life is easy, life is superficial, life is at their command.

The Education Select Committee today was the latest body to highlight the issue of teacher workforce numbers. All headteachers know the difficulties in trying to maintain a full staffing complement and we all know the impact on student performance when staffing shortages occur. So, ensuring that there are enough teachers in the system is extremely important.

It was March 6th 2006 when I died.

Mat was a wonderful student and now that he was in his final year, he had become almost a part of the staff on our regular walking trips.

A late blast of winter fell on the Peak District National Park with a sudden and complete freeze. The low afternoon sun danced on the waters of Ladybower reservoir and Lose Hill threw long shadows across the forest. At the banks of the lake, Mat kicked a rugby ball out ahead and we both sprinted after it. The ball bounced awkwardly in front of me, one way then the next, I grappled with it for a second then pulled the ball tight against my chest and ran as fast as I could. But Mat was young and much fitter than his old teacher and he was on my heels in no time. He lunged forward, locking his arms around my shins and toppling me. My body crashed on to the hard, frozen ground. He had triumphed. Mat beamed with delight and laughed at his success. But immediately, something in my eyes revealed the secret that all was not well. His face changed and he leaned down to me to ask if I was okay. I brushed away the concern, puffed heavily to regain my breath and told him that I was fine.

But I was not fine. The two bottommost ribs on the left of my body had snapped angrily as I impacted with the solid earth and were now screaming out in pain. I composed myself and was helped to my feet by Mat. Again, I reassured him that I was okay and we both walked slowly back to the lake’s shore to join the rest of the group.

Benjamin S Bloom developed Carleton Washburne’s ideas and definitions, which Thomas Guskey codified further to result in the list of core elements of a mastery model for schooling, which, in summary, are:

• Diagnostic Pre-Assessment with Pre-Teaching
• High-Quality, Group-Based Initial Instruction
• Progress Monitoring Through Regular Formative Assessments
• High-Quality Corrective Instruction
• Second, Parallel Formative Assessments
• Enrichment or Extension Activities

Each of these elements, as a way of working with students, is not necessarily impactful. It is in the combining of the elements into the cyclical model (shown in the diagram earlier) that brings about the impact. For example, a pre-test alone makes no difference to learning unless it is followed by an action and, similarly, formative assessments do not improve learning, rather it is the action immediately afterwards that truly matters.

At the turn of the 20^th century, Carleton Washburne would have appeared an unlikely hero.  Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1889, Carleton led an unremarkable life.  His school career was reasonably average for the son of well educated professionals, but he did not excel.  Plodding through life and looking for a path to follow, Carleton turned to his father’s love and attempted to follow in his footsteps by studying medicine at the University of Chicago.  Things did not go well.  His grades fell and his interest waned.

Now frustrated with his life at University of Chicago and left with very few options, Carleton gravitated instead to his mother’s interests.

Carleton’s mother was a strong willed, politically active woman, untypical of the age.  She was a friend to the famed progressive educator John Dewey and would regularly engage with him over many issues.  The parlour would buzz with passionate debate about the purpose of education and how it might be bettered as the young Carleton listened eagerly while he played.  From the very beginning, Carleton’s life was one steeped in education theory and policy.

Carleton attended a Dewey school, Francis W. Parker School, in Chicago as a young child and would later go on to become a founding member of the John Dewey Society and president of the Progressive Education Association.

Carleton dropped out of UoC and headed to a new university that was starting to establish itself in California: Stanford.  No longer pursuing medicine, he chose to study education.

As with all young men in the final year of a degree course, Carleton would have needed focus and dedication to his course to be truly successful.  However, in that same year, Carleton fell deeply in love with Heliuz Chandler and all thoughts of studying took second place.  Their first child was on the way.  Despite this, Carleton did manage to scrape through and graduate.

A mediocre university degree in hand and with no real direction in life, Carleton turned his focus to becoming an entrepreneur.  Enthused by what he believed to be a sure fire business success, Carleton borrowed money from any source he could and invested it all in his new idea.  It failed.  Badly.

Now unable to support his family and with no other options in life, Carleton was faced with only one route out of penuary: he reluctantly became a teacher.

On Thursday last week, I wrote a new Blog, #MasteryFail, as an appetiser for a speech I will giving at #MathsConf8 this coming Saturday. I used the blog to highlight my long term support for a mastery model for schooling.  At #MathsConf8, I will discuss the origins of a mastery approach and the weight of evidence to support its efficacy.  I have been speaking and writing about mastery for decades now and find it heartening that this way of operating teaching in schools is having a new renaissance.  Following my speech at the conference, I will release a new blog, Teaching for Mastery, in which I go into great detail about what it is, how it can be implemented and why, if embedded properly, the impact can be incredible.

Unfortunately, as with pretty much all education approaches, the renaissance of mastery has also brought with it much confusion.  So, #MasteryFail was a blog targeted at debunking some of the myths that are flying around at the moment.  If mastery is to have impact in England's schools, then stamping out poor practice early is going to be all important.  I did not expect the blog to be in any way controversial.

I was rather surprised, therefore, to find myself and my company being attacked in public through Tweets from one of the 35 Maths Hubs.

I have such a privileged life, I get to visit schools all around the world and see maths teaching at its very best. I am able to spend time both researching mathematics education and reading the best contemporary evidence as well as well established and proven approaches to pedagogy and subject knowledge.

For decades, I have dedicated all of my time to working to improve education. It is the very lifeblood of a mature civilization, it has the power to transform lives and bring meaning and joy to the world. Mathematics education sits at the top of my priority list – every day, I live and breathe it. My only professional goal in life is to make education better.

So, being able to visit schools and meet with teachers, being able to see experts in practice, being able to hear the stories of success and to witness the extremely nuanced behaviours and dispositions that lead to a mathematics concept being grasped by a child, is an honour.

Over recent months, as I have travelled around England visiting primary and secondary schools, I have repeatedly heard the same word being slapped onto various activities like a brand label. Mastery.

Yesterday evening, like every other Conservative Party Member, I received an email from Theresa May, outlining her plans to create a meritocratic Britain. A Britain that forces more universities and public schools to use their wealth and influence to aid improvements in State schools, a Britain that aims to give “our most academically gifted children the specialist and tailored support that can enable them to fulfil their potential”. I like the sound of that.

But also, a Britain that encourages the use of taxpayer money to increase the link between State and Church by encouraging the expansion of faith schools, “especially new Catholic schools”. A Britain that, yet again refuses to allow a school structure to have any time to settle by introducing the potential redesign of the entire landscape.

There are many things in education, which seem taboo to discuss, of great importance when considering how to realistically improve the quality of classroom practice.

The most effective teachers are those with highly developed, subject specific pedagogical and didactical knowledge and skills, combined with excellent subject content knowledge.

This morning, The Guardian published a piece by Schools Minister, Nick Gibb (the full text can be found here), which seeks to shut down debate by calling those who argue with the central assertion, racist.

Of course, the words are carefully chosen to avoid such a harsh word, but Nick writes ‘Those who try to dismiss their methods using crude national stereotypes’ and accuses anyone who demurs of ‘narrow-mindedness’.

I have long known that the answer to improving an education system is to fill it with teachers who are determined to never stop learning. Teachers who are intellects, who question and challenge, teachers who do not accept the words of fools and instead insist on an evidence informed approach to classroom practice.