"The smaller influence, the immeasurable reach." How one Harris leader is shaping maths education across 55 schools

Dan, you lead Maths across the whole federation. What does that look like day to day?

My team of 10 consultants supports secondary Maths across Harris - everything from pedagogy and curriculum design to exam preparation, lesson planning, and writing assessments – it's a broad remit. But the strategic question beneath it all is always the same: what's going to have the biggest impact, and how do we make it happen at scale across 32 schools? This means that no two days are ever the same!

 

You came to Harris from a headship, and it seems like an unusual route in.

I think I'm the only lead consultant who's ever been externally appointed; everyone else has come up through Harris. Which means I arrived without the institutional history, without knowing how things had always been done in some ways that was uncomfortable. In others, it meant I got to make up my own mind about what mattered.

The reason I made the move was that I missed maths. As a principal, I was still in a school, still around kids, but my days were less teaching and more premises, HR, finance. The thing that got me into teaching in the first place had gradually moved further away. Harris was a chance to get back to it.

 

You started as a Teach First trainee in 2006. What was the journey from there to here?

The usual steps – KS3 maths, second in department, head of department, SLT – at a high-disadvantage, yet high-performing school, in London, which shaped a lot of how I think about teaching. I also became an SLE, a Specialist Leader of Education, which was essentially consultancy work – schools would buy your time, and you'd go in and support them. That's where I first got a taste of working across multiple schools and really enjoyed it. 

I was also a Maths Hub lead for London Central and Northwest, which put me at the start of some genuinely exciting changes in how maths is taught in this country. I was fortunate enough to visit China to look at their teaching approach. My department became something of an exemplar school for what those changes could look like in practice. Bringing that into Harris, trying to spread it across 55 academies, is what I'm still doing now.

 

What kind of teacher is ready to make the move into a consultant role?

You've got to want to reach. As a classroom teacher, you're directly shaping the lives of maybe 100 to 120 students. As you move up, your influence on each child gets smaller – but the number of children you're ultimately affecting gets much, much larger. You're influencing teachers; you're influencing how departments think. If that idea appeals to you, this role will give you that.

You also need a genuinely strategic mindset. There are things we know would have a huge impact on students if every teacher did them, but getting every teacher to do them is hard. And some things have a slightly smaller impact but are much easier to implement at scale. Being a consultant means thinking constantly about that trade-off. It's a longer game than classroom teaching.

And you have to love maths teaching specifically – not just maths. Understanding a Year 7 student's journey: what they've been taught, what misconceptions they might have picked up along the way, how a teacher can meet them where they are. That's the craft.

 

Harris has a particular ethos. Does that matter for this role?

I think it matters a lot. My own reason for going into teaching through Teach First was that students from disadvantaged backgrounds were consistently getting a worse education – and that felt fundamentally wrong. Harris's vision is built around exactly that. If you're going to work here, that has to resonate with you. It's what gives the work its purpose.

I'd put it this way: for some students, a great teacher will always make a difference but probably isn't the deciding factor – they have every advantage already. For the students Harris serves, a great teacher can be genuinely transformative. That's where this work sits. You need to know that and feel it.

 

You talked about the shift away from direct student impact as you move up. Do you miss it?

Yes and no. We do still work with students directly – often the ones with the greatest need, where a teacher has been absent for a while, and we step in. Those moments still matter to me.

But the honest answer is that the satisfaction is different now. I think back to students I taught early in my career — a kid who was disengaged across everything, and then something clicked in maths, and suddenly they were trying in every subject. Those memories stay with you. I know I made a difference to specific people.

In this role, I don't always get to see it. But I know that when a teacher walks into a classroom with better pedagogy, better understanding of how to build relationships, better instincts for students who are struggling, there will be a child in that room who benefits in a way they wouldn't have otherwise. I just might not be there to see it.

 

What about behaviour management – the thing that intimidates almost every new teacher?

It intimidated me too. I came into teaching knowing the maths, able to explain it well, but completely hopeless at behaviour. I was lucky – my mentor early on was extraordinary. He'd been a stand-up comedian, had written for TV, and had a deep understanding of body language, presence, the subtle things that project calm and authority without you saying a word. His guidance played a huge part in my development, and eventually to become a specialist in behaviour management.

I recall one of the things he told me: if you're nervous with a class you don't know well, put one hand in your pocket. The behavioural psychology of it makes you look completely unfazed. Like you have all the time in the world, and everything is going to be fine. It sounds small, but it works. 

The hard thing about learning behaviour management is that you don't always feel the progress in real time. You can spend a whole year getting better – and the same class barely notices, because they've already formed their behaviours. Then September comes, new class, new start, and suddenly everything you've learned just works. That delayed feedback loop is demoralising. But it's how the learning happens. And everyone can learn it!

Finally – AI. You mentioned you'd been in a meeting about it the same morning we spoke.

I'm not worried about it, I think there are far more opportunities than threats.

The internet gave every student access to information instantly – It didn't destroy education. AI is a more powerful version of the same shift, and yes, there are implications, particularly around homework, where it's very hard to know whether a student did their own work. But if that pushes more of the real learning into the classroom, under the guidance of a teacher, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

What excites me is the teacher side. The ability to create resources instantly – differentiated for different needs, different reading levels, different starting points – frees up time for the thing that only teachers can do: actually teach. Read a room, respond to the student in front of you, build relationships. No AI does that.

The future I'd like to see is AI as a tool that's genuinely guided by teachers, not a shortcut that replaces thinking, but something that gives teachers more space to do more of what they're best at.