{"id":7760,"date":"2026-09-09T21:36:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T21:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mathletics.com\/blog\/?p=7760"},"modified":"2026-09-09T21:36:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T21:36:27","slug":"how-mathletics-earned-its-place-in-a-deis-band-1-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mathletics.com\/blog\/educators\/how-mathletics-earned-its-place-in-a-deis-band-1-school\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Motivation Is There.\u201d How Mathletics Earned Its Place in a DEIS Band 1 School \u2013 Not by Promise but by Proof"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ravenswell\u00a0Primary School\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0fit neatly into one box, and\u00a0that’s\u00a0rather the\u00a0point.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a Catholic school under the local diocese, government-funded, home to around 450 students spread across three classes at every year level \u2013 plus two\u2013three classes dedicated to supporting children with additional needs<\/span>\u00a0<\/span> \u2013 and a socioeconomic mix that runs, as classroom teacher and assistant principal Joe Smyth puts it, “from upper social echelon\u2026 to medium and low.” <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ravenswell\u00a0holds DEIS Band 1 status\u00a0<\/span><\/b>(DEIS stands for Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, the Irish government’s programme for schools in disadvantaged areas; Band 1 marks the highest level of need and funding), meaning\u00a0it’s\u00a0a demanding place to teach.\u00a0It’s\u00a0also, as it turns out, exactly the kind of school where\u00a0<\/span>Mathletics has had room to prove itself.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joe would know. A Mathletics veteran,\u00a0he’s\u00a0used the programme for close to two decades \u2013 long enough that\u00a0he’s\u00a0stopped counting \u2013 first in the one-to-one laptop schools he taught in across Australia, then, once he returned home to Ireland, at\u00a0Ravenswell\u00a0itself. And it was that experience, knowing firsthand what the programme could do, that gave him the confidence to bring it into a school that\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0using it at all when he arrived.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What started small \u2013 a batch of about 20 free licences, paid for by the local library \u2013 has grown every year since, and today <\/span>Mathletics runs across First, Second and Third Class, with another year level joining this year.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

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“So far, everybody’s been very pleased with it\u2026 all the teacher feedback we’ve got so far has been very positive.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s look at how it started shifting the numbers that matter most, too.<\/p>\n

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The challenge<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

As is often the case in many schools, literacy had always drawn more attention at Ravenswell than maths. There’d been a hands-on programme for teaching it early on, but nothing carried past Junior and Senior Infants [ages 4 to 6] \u2013 after that, each year level was left to sort it out on its own, mostly with textbooks, with nothing holding it together as a whole-school approach. When it comes to numeracy scores, Joe\u00a0<\/span>wouldn\u2019t<\/span>\u00a0call them bad<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u2013 they just weren\u2019t being watched or supported in the same way literacy was.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then\u00a0there’s\u00a0the layer that comes with DEIS Band 1 status:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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every euro spent\u00a0has to\u00a0be justified with evidence, not enthusiasm.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And accessibility cuts deeper than budget \u2013 you simply can’t assume a family has a device sitting at home, ready to go, so homework was never really viable in the usual sense. Tasks were assigned at the start of the week, with class time built in alongside, so every child got a fair shot at finishing regardless of what waited for them after school.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Layer on top of that a school where needs run the full range \u2013 behavioural, learning support, social, often all three in the one classroom \u2013 and “one thing that works for everyone” was never really on the table.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The solution<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Getting Mathletics into classrooms was the easy part.\u00a0<\/span>Getting it to stay at a DEIS Band 1 school, where every implementation\u00a0has to\u00a0be data-driven, took proof\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u2013 and proof was exactly what Joe got.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u00a0started small and\u00a0low-stakes: those first 20 licences went to the support groups he was already running, small clusters of\u00a0pupils\u00a0working outside the main class. It gave him room to test the fit without asking the school to bet on anything.\u00a0It also\u00a0didn’t\u00a0hurt that Mathletics was already written into Ravenswell’s DEIS plan \u2013 had been for a few years, in fact, just never implemented. Joe’s timing happened to land right as that part of the plan was due to move ahead.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of that first year, he saw results:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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“We were looking at addressing our numeracy scores, and our numeracy scores did go up in the\u00a0third class\u00a0test year\u2026 there was improvements, and some significant improvements for some\u00a0students,” Joe says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That was enough. “When I was able to justify the cost after the first year and we showed the improvements,” he explains, “I said we can expand it out to all three classes in that year level.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And\u00a0that’s\u00a0the pattern\u00a0that’s\u00a0repeated every year since. Joe gathers the data, brings it to\u00a0management\u00a0and asks for more: another class, another year level, another round of licences.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When we peek into the platform\u2019s own numbers, we see a similar story of growth:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/span>Rav<\/span>enswell<\/span>\u00a0pupils\u2019\u00a0<\/span>activity scores climbed by an average of 17.69%<\/span><\/span>, comparing where they started with where they finished.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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“So it was basically driven on the data\u2026 the management were supported, but the other teachers were supportive of it too.”<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Part of the reason\u00a0it’s\u00a0stuck is that Mathletics works with the way Joe already teaches, not against it \u2013 “very\u00a0teacher-friendly,” as he puts it.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Live Mathletics does some useful work here too: pupils play head-to-head against classmates, each working at their own level, with nobody any the wiser about who’s ahead and who isn’t. As Joe puts it, <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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“it allows those kids to build a sort of confidence: ‘I’m not too bad at maths, I can do this’.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\nThe impact<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

While the numbers show\u00a0progress, Joe believes the shift in attitude might be even more significant.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He describes kids at the start of the year who write themselves off before\u00a0they’ve\u00a0even tried \u2013 the usual refrain, something like\u00a0‘<\/span>I’m\u00a0rubbish\u00a0at this,\u00a0I’ll\u00a0never be good at maths’.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0Somewhere along the way, on Mathletics, that story starts to crack. “So\u00a0the motivation is there,” he says, and it shows:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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“The kids’ general level of engagement was brilliant and really enthusiastic.”\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That matters more in a school like\u00a0Ravenswell\u00a0than it might elsewhere. When a child is already carrying more outside the classroom than most, confidence\u00a0is often the thing standing between them and engaging with the subject at all.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though Joe saw ‘a good jump in the numbers’, the\u00a0improvement\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0uniform, and Joe’s candid about that. “We’ve seen improvements through the middle and lower middle cohort in the classes\u2026 we’ve seen it now over\u00a0two year\u00a0levels that it has improved it,” he says.\u00a0But for the small number of\u00a0pupils\u00a0facing the steepest challenges, isolating what Mathletics did versus everything else going on in their lives is harder to untangle, and he\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0pretend otherwise.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A few features have done particular work for a cohort this diverse:<\/span><\/p>\n