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Grattan Institute: ‘1 in 3 Australian school students fail to achieve proficiency in maths’

Maths Trek 2/6/25

In April 2025 the Grattan Institute published a report entitled The Maths Guarantee: How to boost students’ learning in primary schools¹, which opened with a confronting fact: ’Australia has a maths problem. One in three of our school students fail to achieve proficiency in maths’ (p. 3).

Too many Australian students are underperforming in maths. Why?

According to the report, maths has been deprioritised in education for too long. The report also highlights the need to move away from unproven teaching methods and emphasises the importance of explicit and systematic maths instruction. This involves breaking down learning into small, manageable chunks, explaining concepts carefully and clearly, and providing lots of practice. 

Additionally, the report also acknowledges the significant amount of time teachers spend creating their own resources, which highlights the need to provide them with high-quality resources ready-made for use in the classroom. 

Student underperformance is also exacerbated by the use of gamified activities and resources, which are pedagogically superficial and lack explicit instruction in new concepts and skills.

Further, the report suggests underperformance is compounded by the expectation that teachers should be experts in a subject they haven’t been adequately trained to teach and may not feel confident in.

Put simply ‘When we teach maths well, children and the nation benefit. But taught poorly, students are robbed of a core life skill. Adults with weaker maths skills have worse job prospects and are more likely to struggle with routine tasks such as budgeting and understanding health guidance’ (p. 3).

It’s time for Australian education to give maths instruction the attention and support it deserves.

What is the Maths Guarantee strategy?

To address maths proficiency effectively and drive meaningful improvement, the report recommends governments, in addition to the Catholic and independent school sectors, commit to a 10-year, five-step Maths Guarantee strategy as follows:

Step 1: Commit to a long-term aspiration of 90 per cent of students achieving proficiency in numeracy, as measured by NAPLAN.
Step 2: Ensure schools have clear guidance on how to teach maths well. Department staff should align on this guidance too.
Step 3: Arm schools with quality-assured curriculum materials and rigorously evaluated assessments.
Step 4: Invest in high-quality professional development to support teachers and school leaders to implement best practice in their classrooms.
Step 5: Improve monitoring and oversight through stronger school reviews and the introduction of a mandatory, research-validated early years numeracy screening tool.

How can Maths Trek transform your school’s numeracy outcomes?

While the findings in the report are confronting, they likely come as no surprise to educators. In many schools, mathematics instruction often lacks the same level of focus and consistency given to literacy. It’s all too common for schools to have mismatched resources and for teachers to implement different approaches across classrooms.

Due to the cumulative nature of maths, and given the expertise required to teach it, educators should be provided with what they need, when they need it, for every maths lesson. Schools need to know which learning materials will support pedagogical improvement and lead to consistent whole-school student learning. Here’s where Maths Trek can help.

Maths Trek is a whole-school numeracy program aligned with evidence-informed instruction. The program’s structured framework and intuitive resources are designed to support explicit teaching and streamline maths lessons.

Maths Trek follows the Gradual Release of Responsibility model ², supporting student mastery of core maths skills, while the real-world contexts of investigations foster deeper understanding, fluency, reasoning and problem-solving skills.

The program successfully promotes student understanding and engagement, with the additional strength of supporting teachers to deliver maths instruction thoroughly and effectively. It provides detailed lesson guides, custom interactive tools, worked examples to demonstrate concepts in context, question prompts to spark rich discussion, and meaningful activities that reinforce newly taught content. Seamlessly integrated, these resources save teachers valuable time by eliminating the need to create materials from scratch, allowing them to focus more on explicit teaching and meeting the individual needs of their students to improve outcomes.

How does Maths Trek deliver on the curriculum?

Maths Trek has been written to the latest curriculum requirements and comes in two editions to suit Australian classrooms. Teachers are thoroughly supported with planning documents, including:


Australian Curriculum Edition

Scope and Sequence F–6
Australian Curriculum Match v9 (Years F–6) Victorian Curriculum Match v2 (Years F–6)

NSW Syllabus Edition

NSW Scope and Sequence K–6
NSW Syllabus Match (Early Stage 1–Stage 1) NSW Syllabus Match (Stage 2–Stage 3)*

How does Maths Trek align with the key indicators of effective maths teaching?

The report’s findings and recommendations are summarised in Table 2.1: Practice snapshot: Selected indicators of effective maths teaching (p. 28).

Indicators of more effective practice
Each lesson has a clear and measurable learning intention which serves as a tight focus for the lesson – activities and games are used intentionally.
Teachers regularly check that students have understood, using methods such as mini whiteboards to get frequent, whole-class data on students’ success against the learning intention.
Before students apply learning independently, teachers spend time explaining and modelling concepts and procedures, and guiding whole-class practice (during which students get immediate feedback so they know if they are right).
Teachers use whole-class participation tactics – such as mini whiteboards and think–pair–share – to maximise engagement.
Students develop fluency with one strategy before new strategies are introduced, and are taught which strategy is most useful when.
Teachers emphasise both procedural fluency and conceptual understanding, because they see them as mutually reinforcing.
Students periodically revisit taught concepts, with regular cumulative reviews.
Students all work on the same overarching learning intention, and the range of students’ needs is met through different scaffolds (e.g. some students spend longer in guided practice with the teacher while others do independent practice).

Many schools using Maths Trek’s resources can attest to how effectively the program helps teachers meet key indicators of high-quality maths instruction. Each lesson includes learning intentions, regular revision units to reinforce previously taught concepts, and thoughtfully designed discussion prompts to check in and maximise engagement.

The Gradual Release of Responsibility ² structure mentioned above is one of the program’s most valuable features. This approach allows teachers to ‘spend time explaining and modelling concepts and procedures’ while students ‘work on the same overarching learning intention’ (p. 28). Differentiation is built in, so teachers can provide additional support and guidance to students who need it, without shifting the focus away from the core content for the whole class.

This I do, we do, you do lesson format is an effective way to deliver explicit teaching. Every Maths Trek lesson includes a detailed lesson guide to accompany the lesson slideshow. The lesson guides provide teachers with question prompts, example answers and explanation summaries to help them deliver an effective lesson. The lesson slideshows typically begin with a clear learning intention and whole-class warm up. Subsequent slides include interactive tools and worked examples for the teacher to explicitly teach the given maths concept. The teaching is swiftly followed by whole-class guided practice and culminates with students completing independent practice activities to directly consolidate what they’ve learned in the lesson.

What support is provided to teachers implementing Maths Trek? High-quality professional learning workshops!

A primary concern outlined in the Grattan report is the lack of adequate guidance and high-quality professional learning opportunities provided to Australian educators.

It’s essential for schools to invest in teachers attending maths-focused conferences and meaningful professional development if they’re seeking to improve maths outcomes. However, due to time and budget constraints, this responsibility often falls on just one or two individuals, who are then expected to share the knowledge with the rest of the team. What’s needed is high-quality professional learning for all staff. A well-designed workshop that explores the teaching resources and tools used in classrooms can have a powerful impact, ensuring everyone is aligned and working consistently in a whole-school approach.

Fortunately, Maths Trek is here to help! To ensure the program is effectively implemented across your whole school, free professional learning and ongoing support is provided by a team of highly experienced education consultants. The consultants provide a range of tailored professional learning opportunities to continually support you and your school, with workshop offerings including Delivering Impactful Lessons with Maths Trek and Enhancing your Students’ Critical Thinking Skills in Numeracy.

Head to our website to request a workshop for your school, register for a virtual workshop, browse the professional learning articles or simply reach out to your local education consultant at any time of the year with your questions.

References

1. Hunter, J, Haywood, A, Parkinson, N, Daniel, P 2025, The Maths Guarantee: How to boost students’ learning in primary schools, Report, Grattan Institute, viewed 24 April 2025, https://grattan.edu.au/report/maths-guarantee/↩

2. Department of Education and Training Victoria 2024, Excellence in differentiation to increase student engagement and learning outcomes, Professional Practice Note 16, viewed 24 April 2025, https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/teachers/teachingresources/practice/professionalpracticenote16.pdf↩

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