I am absolutely thrilled to win £20,000 grant to help primary school children

Maths teacher Joanne de Groot, from Our Lady of Pity RC Primary in Greasby, has been awarded a Let Teachers SHINE grant of £20,000 to expand her Diagnostic Maths Assessment tool that measures primary school children’s strengths and weaknesses across ten key curriculum areas.

Current maths assessments often only give an overall score, making it difficult for teachers to know the specific areas pupils struggle with.

Joanne said: “We want to really understand where children are on their maths journey,.

“The real benefit of this diagnostic test is being able to tailor support to an individual pupil’s needs. The data can be analysed by various groupings of pupils to allow targeted group, class or even whole school intervention.

“Our test is set up to be diagnostic, and that’s really different,” she said. “It’s completely aligned with the National Curriculum for primary level and analyses the ten key skills that children need.”

“We asked a local artist to illustrate the tests with a lovely little character called Pippy that she designed. Pippy guides the children through the test and is doing all sorts of fun things, making it very child friendly,” said Joanne.

Joanne works alongside her nephew Oscar Bray, an Oxford University maths graduate who has helped both road test the project with her as a child and now writes the computer program code to move the assessment tool online.

In the future Joanne and Oscar hope that the Diagnostic Assessment Tool will become a standard part of primary education, adding that “the long-term goal is that our test is widely used and leads to better maths outcomes for learners”.

She continued: “Winning this award will help us reach more schools and improve our system to better meet the needs of teachers and schools in their drive to improve maths standards.”

Eventually the duo hope to develop the tool into a web platform that teachers can use to analyse results themselves and get immediate feedback. Joanne said: “The SHINE grant will help us pilot the system in more schools and gather valuable feedback, which will drive further development.

“We are absolutely thrilled to win this award. The support provided by SHINE is exactly what we need in order to move our project forward, and we are very excited by the prospect of working with SHINE.”

Run annually by the North of England education charity SHINE, the Let Teachers SHINE competition identifies and supports promising educational innovations.

In addition to funding, winners receive access to a comprehensive programme of development workshops and one-to-one support to help refine and scale their ideas. Joanne’s project is one of nine winners to land a share of more than £175,00 this year.