I've spent the last few days digesting Victoria’s Mathematics Position Statement along with the commentary online and talking to maths teacher colleagues - here's my summary.
Schools must align mathematics programs with the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0, using clear learning objectives, small-step explanations, worked examples and data-informed support or extension.
Automatic recall of foundational facts frees working memory for higher-level reasoning. Recommended timetable: ~60 min daily in primary and ~200 min weekly in Years 7–10, with spaced, varied practice that integrates understanding, fluency, reasoning and problem solving.
How we help schools do this: As we all know in a school day there can be so many things students have to keep on top of and often they need a refresher from the day’s learning. Our teacher presented videos bridge that gap so students can spend their time on practice to reach mastery as stated. Cognitive science makes clear that spaced retrieval practice embeds students’ learning in long term memory. This is why we’ve automated retrieval practice for all of our Victorian courses.
Victorian Lesson Plans (VLPs) aligned to the new Victorian Curriculum: Mathematics 2.0 provide ready-made, research-aligned units. Using shared resources reduces teacher workload and ensures consistent mathematical language and rigor.
How we help schools do this: Our 7-10 Maths teaching and learning system provides a common curriculum aligned shared resource that gives insights to teachers to track their students progress over the year.
Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) enable early screening and targeted intervention. All students—including girls and learners with disabilities—should experience regular success to strengthen self-efficacy. Families will receive guidance on fostering numeracy at home.
How we help schools do this: The data insights show teachers early on which students may need early intervention or are not on track for success.
Targeted professional learning and system support will boost confidence among primary generalists and out-of-field Years 7–10 teachers, ensuring every classroom benefits from strong mathematics pedagogy.
How we help schools do this: We’ve identified the need for better curriculum-aligned resources to help teachers of Mathematics in Victoria achieve success with the new curriculum. We spent 100s of hours poring over the curriculum to break knowledge dot-points into more digestible pieces. Not only are the most common misconceptions that may arise in every lesson called out to help the “large proportion of Years 7-10 mathematics teachers teaching out-of-field”, we have for 10+ years published Australia’s premium teacher-presenter videos: lessons break down and explain worked examples, all mapped explicitly to VC2.0.
This type of professional support is essential to helping fill the gaps in mathematics education. Our easy to follow teacher theory videos in Years 7-10 can be used in class, out of class, by teachers or as follow up with students who need more clarification. With closed captioning and speed controls, we are the only teaching and learning system in Victoria that enables students with diverse learning needs to access and re-access expert instruction, on demand, as often as needed at a tiny % of the cost of a private tutor.
By combining explicit instruction, adequate instructional time, shared resources, wellbeing supports and robust professional development, Victoria aims to lift numeracy outcomes for every learner and close longstanding equity gaps.
This is easy to say but harder to do in practice across 100s of schools - this is why I've spent the last 3+ years with dozens of maths teacher colleagues to build a system, based on this same evidence-based understanding of what works - it's built, it's ready and I honestly believe it can help smooth the path towards the vision we're trying to achieve in Victoria.
