WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY....
MORE THAN SCORES AND SPEED: REDEFINING WHAT PROGRESS LOOKS LIKE IN MATHS Comment by ALEXANDER ATHIENITIS, Director of Curriculum at EdShed
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or too long, progress in maths has been reduced to a timer and a score. How quickly can children recall facts? How many questions can they answer in five minutes? What score did they achieve on last week’s test? While these measures may be convenient, they are also profoundly incomplete.
If we want pupils to become confident, agile thinkers, rather than just speedy responders, we must challenge this narrow definition of progress. True progress lies in depth, not haste. It’s reflected in flexible thinking, not merely automatic responses. Real progress is evident when children can apply concepts confidently in unfamiliar contexts, not just when they race through worksheets against the clock.
The mastery approach makes this clear. Progress isn’t just accelerating through content. Instead, it’s about building durable, connected understanding that supports every learner. Moving forward together as a class is the goal, providing rapid graspers with opportunities to deepen and refine their thinking rather than rush ahead onto new content. It’s where ‘greater depth’ comes into play, rather than ‘faster answers’. In these classrooms, representation matters as much as procedure and explanation is valued as highly as the answer itself. It’s where effort and strategy, as opposed to innate speed, become the markers of success. This kind of fluency and understanding simply can’t be reduced to speed. Fluency is automaticity built upon comprehension. Take times tables, for example: meaningful fluency develops when children explore patterns, build representations, use derived facts and encounter multiplication through multiple models and contexts, rather than by chanting alone. It’s only then that speed becomes a by-product of secure understanding, rather than a shortcut around it.
Two pedagogical approaches are central to this. The Concrete–Pictorial– Abstract (CPA) model gives pupils the freedom to move between physical
manipulatives, diagrams and symbols, enabling them to return to earlier representations when reasoning becomes challenging, promoting flexibility and genuine understanding. Similarly, bar modelling is a powerful visual tool that makes the relationships in problems visible and explicit, helping children think clearly about structure before calculation. It forces children to represent relationships explicitly, making reasoning visible and supporting accurate problem-solving.
Crucially, our assessments must evolve in the same direction. Timed tests undoubtedly have their place, but they alone cannot carry the full weight of how we judge progress. Rich professional judgement comes from observing how pupils explain ideas, justify choices, adapt strategies and represent concepts.
Increasingly, we see teachers using discussion, questioning, mini- whiteboards and open tasks to bring to the surface thinking that would otherwise have remained hidden. It’s here that EdTech has an enormous opportunity: to build tools that respond to reasoning pathways rather than just correctness; tools that offer varied and intelligent practice, and tools that illuminate conceptual connections instead of simply tracking pace. None of this means ignoring statutory assessments such as the Multiplication Tables Check. Instead, it means preparing for them in ways that enrich learning instead of narrowing it. When children meet multiplication conceptually and coherently, fluency and the speed the test demands emerge naturally.
If we continue to define progress purely in terms of speed and scores, we risk training children to perform mathematics without truly understanding it. But if we embrace an approach rooted in reasoning, representation and depth, fluency grows from mastery, and speed follows understanding. That is what real progress looks like.
DIGITAL GCSE RESULTS ARE PROGRESS ONLY IF THE SYSTEM IS BUILT FOR REAL-WORLD ACCESS Comment by NIC RIEMER, CEO of The Invigilator
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hen the Department for Education confirmed that GCSE results will be delivered digitally from summer 2026, it marked another visible milestone in the modernisation of England’s education system. The rationale is sound. Faster delivery, reduced administrative burden for schools, and smoother transitions into further education, training and employment.
From the perspective of organisations working on digital assessment infrastructure, the shift itself is not controversial. The question is whether the
system has been designed for the conditions students actually experience. At The Invigilator, we work with education providers delivering high- stakes assessment in constrained environments, including low bandwidth, shared devices and inconsistent connectivity. One lesson consistently emerges. Digital systems succeed only when access, resilience and verification are treated as foundational infrastructure, not downstream considerations.
That distinction matters because digital access in the UK remains uneven. Ofcom data shows that around 5 percent of people aged 16 and over, approximately 2.6 million individuals, still have no internet access at home. A further 1.5 million rely entirely on mobile data. In practical terms, this often means capped allowances, unstable connections and devices shared across households.
Affordability compounds the risk. Ofcom’s 2025 Communications Affordability Tracker found that 24 percent of UK households, around 6.7 million, struggled to pay for at least one communications service in the
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previous month. When data is rationed or connectivity is unreliable, digital services that assume constant access quickly become exclusionary. The impact on education is already measurable. Research published in 2025 by RM Technology and the Digital Poverty Alliance found that 57 percent of low-income families say their child struggles to access learning outside school due to device or connectivity issues. Fifteen percent of households reported sharing a single device, while 11 percent had little or no home internet access. Seventy-five percent of teachers surveyed said poor digital access is contributing to pupils falling behind or disengaging. Against this backdrop, digital results delivery is not a neutral administrative change. For pupils, GCSE results arrive at a critical decision point, shaping enrolment choices, application timelines and confidence at a formative moment. If results are delivered digitally, the system must function reliably under real-world constraints, not idealised assumptions about access. This challenge becomes more acute as assessment itself moves online. Ofqual has already indicated that some GCSEs and A levels could transition to on-screen delivery later this decade. Once both exams and results depend on digital systems, access gaps shift from being a peripheral issue to a core question of fairness, resilience and trust in outcomes.
Assessment infrastructure designed to work only in optimal conditions is fragile. Systems built to operate under pressure, including limited bandwidth, shared devices and disrupted environments, are more inclusive, more reliable and ultimately more scalable. This is not a social policy argument alone, it is a systems design one.
Digital GCSE results represent genuine progress. But digitisation is not the same as accessibility. If reform is to deliver on its promise, access, resilience and verification must be designed in from the outset. Digital by default must also mean access by design.
February 2026
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