Nuffield Curriculum Centre

Nuffield Advanced Mathematics

Director
Hugh Neill

Aims
Nuffield Advanced Mathematics was led by Hugh Neill, a former Chief Inspector of the ILEA and a member of the Cockroft Committee. The Trustees awarded the grant in 1989 to fund a project designed to promote independent study by students, and to exploit the power of programmable calculators and computers in advanced mathematics courses.

An important aim was to attract a wider range of students and more girls to A-level maths.

Partnerships
Other Trusts contributed to the funding which amounted to about £1m. The project collaborated with a unit in Northumberland charged with developing resources for independent learning to support students in small groups in rural schools.

The development phase of the project was completed in the Nuffield Curriculum Centre era.

Impact
Despite the originality and high quality of the publications, not many schools adopted the course. The last examination was in 1999.

Among the factors which may have contributed to the failure of the project were the following:

• The project seems to have had few supporters among lead practitioners.
  
• The new accountability based on league tables inhibited risk-taking with a new course that looked hard.
  
• The use of ICT seemed too far outside the comfort zone for teachers.
  
• The students’ publications for the course were about twice as expensive as for other comparable courses.
  
• Two other new but less innovative courses had recently been published, including a popular modular mathematics scheme.