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2 years of learning in 1? Initial findings from the Explicit Mathematics Program

Findings from an initial analysis of the Explicit Mathematics Program's first year of operation

Author

Ollie Lovell
March 25, 2026

Well, the results are in. We have some concrete evidence from a sample of schools who used the EMP in 2025… and it’s very encouraging!

Late last year I emailed all schools who used the Explicit Mathematics Program in our first year (2025) asking if any were willing to share de-identified PAT data for analysis. We heard back from from approximately 5% of participating schools, and we have since combined these data to generate an impact report.

Here’s the headline result:

Summarising the above…

We found that the average Year 2 student who undertook the EMP in 2025 (from this sample) achieved 23.4 months equivalent annualised growth. This represents the equivalent of 1.95 years of learning in a single calendar year, or almost twice the expected growth rate. 

Further, an EMP student below the 25th percentile (from this sample) achieved an average of 29.7 months of equivalent annualised growth. This represents the equivalent of 2.475 years of growth in a single calendar year, or almost 2.5 times the expected growth rate.

When we did this analysis, we were pretty blown away!

However, there are no guarantees in life, and especially in education. It’s important to note that the positive results reported above were not universally distributed amongst schools. As an illustrative example, below we share the variation in achievement across the 8 schools in the sample for those students below the 25th percentile:

As can be seen, one school, School A, recorded growth for students below the 25th percentile which didn’t even constitute 12 months equivalent growth. In contrast, School H achieved over 3 years equivalent growth from their students under the 25th percentile. This is some serious variation.

As with any instructional program, outcomes will vary across schools. Factors such as school context, implementation fidelity, teacher experience, and much more, all influence the impact of a teaching program, and the EMP is no exception. These results are shared transparently to make clear that the program-wide averages - approximately twice the national growth rate for the typical student, and 2.5 times for students entering in the lowest quartile - are not a guaranteed outcome. Student success is always the product of many interacting factors, and no program delivers uniform results across every context.

These are early results, and only come from a small sample of schools, but they are very encouraging to us and suggest that we’re onto something that has the potential to, we believe, change the achievement of primary mathematics students at a national scale!

To read about all of the limitations we could think of, and some more info around the above reported results and the report’s methodology, you can view the full report here. I would encourage you to have a look in more detail if you have the time.

As always, I invite and encourage any thoughts or critique on this report, we’re always looking to improve every facet of the EMP (including our data analysis).

This year we hope to analyse NAPLAN data of all schools who undertook EMP in 2025. But the real data were looking to is 2028 NAPLAN data, which will represent the impact of the EMP on a whole cohort of students from Foundation (in 2025) through to the commencement of Year 3. Watch this space…

Announcements & Opportunities

A few quick ones today: