The Government says its Year 7 and 8 maths acceleration trial delivered twice the progress of peers over 12 weeks, with most of the gains still evident three months later.

Education Minister Erica Stanford said nearly 3,500 students took part across three delivery models, with in-person tutoring by teachers performing best. Students in the in-person programme made “twice as much progress” as a control group, according to the Minister.

The release also states the control group — students not in the trial but learning under the new curriculum with an hour-a-day of maths and “high quality resources” — made, on average, a full year’s progress across four learning areas in 12 weeks. The Minister describes this as evidence of wider classroom changes taking effect.

The programme targets students a year or more behind and focuses on four areas: number structure, addition and subtraction; multiplication and division (including basic facts); rational numbers (fractions, decimals, percentages); and reasoning/decoding and solving word problems. It runs four 30-minute sessions a week for 12 weeks. Students were tested at baseline (week 0), at the end of the programme (week 12), and again 12 weeks later (week 24).

Three delivery models were trialled: in-person tutoring, a hybrid model mixing online modules and teacher-led instruction, and an online-only model supervised by a teacher aide. The release emphasises the in-person results but does not provide comparative figures for the hybrid or online-only groups.

Key evaluation details are not included in the release, including:

• The assessment tools used and how “a year’s progress” is defined
• Randomisation or selection processes for trial and control groups
• Effect sizes or raw score gains
• A breakdown of results by delivery model, school, or region
• Independent peer review of the analysis

The Minister says students achieved similar results regardless of background, gender or ethnicity, and that most gains were retained at the three-month follow-up. No subgroup data is published in the release.

The maths acceleration programme is now available to schools for students who may benefit. The Ministry has made professional learning available for teachers and additional modules for students who need support beyond 12 weeks.

The announcement sits within a broader maths push that includes structured mathematics in the curriculum, one million printed workbooks and textbooks, hour-a-day maths, “phones away” rules, increased maths requirements for new teachers, $20 million for professional learning in structured maths, and new resources for Year 9 and 10 students who are behind.