You may import a “style of teaching”, but cannot import the social environment of teaching — this is a key, and, perhaps, impassible obstacle to development of a coherent mathematics education policy in England. But attempts continue regardless: DfE has no other options.
From BBC:
Thousands of primary schools in England are to be offered the chance to follow an Asian style of teaching maths.
More from BBC:
Asian maths method offered to schools
The government is providing £41m of funding to help interested schools to adopt this method, which is used in high performing places like Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong.
The money will be available to more than 8,000 primary schools in England.
This approach to maths is already used in some schools, but the cash means it can be taken up more widely.
The Department for Education says the mastery approach to maths teaching, as it is known, involves children being taught as a whole class and is supported by the use of high-quality textbooks.
Read the full story. Coming soon: comments on mastery and NCETM‘s thinking
More detailed explanations of the NCETM’s thinking in this developing area can be found in several posts on the blog page of our Director, Charlie Stripp, in a document entitled The Essence of Maths Teaching for Mastery, published in June 2016, and in an earlier NCETM paper from autumn 2014.
De Morgan Gazette 