During the academic year 2017/2018, Tata and Nesta ran a series of pilot projects across the UK to find effective ways to increase young people’s interest in maths and improve their maths and collaborative problem-solving skills.

Based on the positive evaluation results of these pilot projects, from September 2018 to June 2020 the Maths Mission programme continued to support new innovations in this area, through three strands. This report outlines the approach we took through each strand and the results and impact of the activities, and provides key learning for the wider maths education community.

Key findings include:

• Maths peer mentoring can be an effective way to improve young people’s maths skills as well as their social and emotional skills. While there is more work to be done to understand the size and nature of this impact, it is important that more schools are able to deliver good quality, structured peer support programmes.
• Competitions which challenge students to use maths in creative ways and work together in teams can help increase students’ interest in maths and provide students with the opportunity to develop their presentation, problem-solving and teamwork skills. It is important to ensure such competitions are inclusive and do not just engage students who are already interested in maths. More work needs to be done to understand the impact of competitions, and to consider how such creative approaches could inform the wider curriculum.
• Digital parental engagement tools such as apps can be successful in improving parental engagement in maths. Key barriers include lack of access to suitable technology or reluctance to use online tools. Technology offers lots of potential solutions to challenges with parental engagement, but more work needs to be done to ensure such tools help parents and young people who most need support.