What is more, we have a full time mathematician in the Junior School preparing our girls for specialist maths teaching from Year 7.
With a brilliant Head of Faculty (Susan Jackson), the team were reviewed this year as part of our internal evaluation strategy. It was an excellent outcome, with the reviewer particularly impressed with the quality of teaching.
He wrote: “The overall view was that the teachers were highly skilled, knew the course content up to Excellence levels and beyond, and had numerous strategies to support student learning and revision for both internal and external assessments.“
In reviewing especially the content and delivery for qualifications, the reviewer spoke with both students and staff and commented that: “Overall, there was a sense that during the Senior School, teachers encouraged students alot, delivered quality lessons, shared lots of resources with them and they liked their teachers. The student voice heard, from students in Years 11, 12 and 13, was positive, that their teachers were passionate about their teaching and wanted all of the girls to do well, irrespective of their ability level.”
We were also particularly interested in the success of not streaming girls in Year 7. Our philosophy being that students have a big year of transition into a different environment. We believe that it is important to settle in, build relationships and friendship groups, and explore a wide range of subject areas without feeling pressured. The reviewer commented particularly about this as we were interested in how the students found this approach.
The reviewer said: “One girl truly believed that if Maths had been streamed in Year 7, then she would have been placed in the bottom class and that would have probably signalled the end to her interest in maths. This girl is now a high-flying student, loves the subject and is so thankful to teachers for encouraging her to embrace her learning and to believe in herself. Many spoke about the great Year 7 course programme, where there was lots of variety, lots of cool and fun tasks and being with their core class, helped them settle into a new school. Year 7 allowed them to form strong bonds and friendship with other girls. After a solid grounding and a wide look through lots of mathematical topics, then the girls felt in a much stronger position to embrace streamed classes from Year 8.”
We are delighted with this feedback and congratulate Susan Jackson and the maths faculty on their innovations, care and support for our vision that everyone can excel.
The national assessment data shows that Dio is one of the highest achieving numeracy, and we are proud to ensure that our girls are well set-up for further mathematical learning.
