Evaluation of White Rose Maths (WRM) Post-16 Maths Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
26 November 2025
The White Rose Maths (WRM) Post-16 Maths Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme was funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and aimed to support teachers of GCSE maths resits and/or Functional Skills Qualification (FSQ) maths who were teaching students aged 16-19. It provided a sustained programme of CPD lasting 14 months and was delivered in three overlapping cohorts between February 2023 and March 2025.
WRM commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to undertake an independent evaluation of the CPD programme. The evaluation is based on: interviews with the WRM programme manager; a focus group with WRM programme leads; baseline and endpoint surveys completed by participants; monitoring information and internal evaluation data collected by WRM; and case-study interviews in six colleges.
Key Findings
- The CPD was delivered in 49 further education (FE) colleges nationwide and involved 555 teachers of maths - considerably exceeding targets for the number of colleges and teachers reached, indicating a substantial demand for the programme.
- Participants reported high levels of satisfaction with the programme, with the content and delivery widely viewed as high quality. Notable positive features of the programme included the knowledge and expertise of the programme leads and the opportunity for face-to-face, tailored and whole department collaborative support and development.
- There is evidence that taking part in the programme helped to enhance participants’ maths subject and pedagogical knowledge and confidence teaching GCSE maths topics, as well as substantially increased confidence, understanding and use of mastery strategies in GCSE/FSQ maths teaching. Most participants reported that they had implemented learning from the programme in their maths practice and that the programme had improved their maths teaching.