‘When we’ve got a group of kids in front of us, it’s not just the kids, it’s their maths history that’s in front of us.’ 

MESHA insights help schools understand how past learning journeys shape current student performance, and where teaching teams can step in to support future growth.

In Term 2 2026, 336 Firbank Grammar students completed MESHA. Firbank Grammar is committed to giving its students every opportunity to grow, and MESHA supports that commitment by giving teaching teams the insights they need to accelerate academic performance and student growth.

Cameron Hall, Head of Mathematics at Firbank Grammar, shared how Maths MESHA has also transformed the way his faculty collaborates, strengthening the school’s ability to support high-quality student learning.

Using MESHA to unpack a student’s maths history and address learning gaps

Every maths class is diverse, filled with students whose learning journeys have been shaped by a unique mix of factors. For Cameron, recognising that 'whenever we've got a group of kids in front of us, it's not just the kids that are in front of us, it's their maths history that's in front of us', is crucial to understanding the complexities of academic performance. 

The challenge for schools is accessing an accurate snapshot of data that shows how those maths histories are shaping student behaviour today. Within those histories are learning gaps that can evolve and compound over time. As Cameron describes, 'the further down the path you get, the more you have to negotiate a whole range of gaps, and they can be hard to see sometimes'.

This is the core problem MESHA sets out to solve. Its assessment reports give teaching teams genuine, timely and actionable data on student learning misconceptions at an individual, class and cohort level. The insights are comparative too, so schools can see how misconceptions play out both within their own school and against similar schools.

Cameron’s reflections on negotiating such a wide range of learning gaps echo Professor Dianne Siemon’s research on the seven levels of conceptual development that can exist within a single classroom. Left unaddressed, these gaps compound and widen as students move through school, and addressing them is part of why MESHA exists.

When schools have accurate evidence on what's working, what's misunderstood, and what's compounding learning gaps, 'it reminds us of the necessity of listening to how kids are asking questions and the different ways of teaching a concept that can effectively address barriers to student growth'. The misconceptions MESHA reports pick up aren't only historical, they capture what's happening right now, too. For example, a group of Firbank students answered a MESHA question on gradient incorrectly, all making the same error: inverting the rise-over-run formula. This was the same cohort who had performed well on this exact topic in school tests earlier in the year, when it was first taught. Armed with that misconception data, Firbank teachers could reteach the concept and close the gap early, rather than let it compound as the years went on.

MESHA data reports support collaborative faculty curriculum planning

With assessment reports delivered within 10 days of the assessment window closing, MESHA is changing how faculties design lessons and build strong collegiate networks.

Faculty meeting time is scarce at most schools, and Firbank is no exception. As Cameron states, 'when one maths teacher has a free period, most of the others are likely in class'. Conversations happen informally, over lunch or in passing, but that only goes so far. It means the rare formal meeting time must be focused, and grounded in clear, simple reference points.

Firbank’s Maths Faculty has structured recent meetings around the MESHA data. For Cameron, the reason is simple: 'it gives us data we can use now'. Instead of spending meeting time trying to map broad assessment data onto student understanding across a term's worth of topics, the faculty can focus squarely on the misconceptions that need attention now, and work out how to act on them in-term.

Comparing data between classes within the same school has also opened up new opportunities for teachers to learn from one another. Cameron shares: 'there are certainly parts of the curriculum where you can say, well, this teacher has done that really well in teaching the concepts; it could just be luck, but it’s something worth looking into. How did you teach that compared to everyone else? Is there something for us to learn as a group of colleagues trying to do the best for everyone?' For Cameron, these are insights that are 'not found anywhere else', and the way the data is presented lends itself to 'good, positive conversations'.

The immediacy and usability of MESHA gives Firbank Grammar insights other assessment tools cannot

When Cameron first presented MESHA to Firbank’s executive leadership, they responded positively and immediately understood the value of in-term, actionable misconception data. Other assessment tools, Cameron notes, can end up being used mainly to rank students, leaving teachers with little they can actually do with the data. 'At a school level and an individual level, those assessments only provide a snapshot of the day students are sitting the test…especially with younger students, how much can we actually value that experience?' MESHA is different: 'we’re doing it under conditions we’re controlling. We know the kids and because the data comes back soon after, we can then act upon it - it’s actually useful for us'. Schools can choose to run MESHA at any point during the assessment window.

When Cameron put the idea to his faculty, teachers immediately saw the value in MESHA’s comparative and misconception data, their only questions were about the logistics of running the assessment. As Cameron puts it, ‘once it was underway, the process ran smoothly, and the teachers were excited about the data’. At just 40 minutes to administer, MESHA fits neatly into a standard school period.

MESHA tells schools a valuable story, it makes assessment scores meaningful. More than that, it helps teaching teams unpack the layers of student performance built up over terms and years. Most importantly, it lets faculties take timely, targeted action across a whole cohort, shaping where student outcomes go next.