University of Liverpool Maths School: Meet the headteacher behind the North West's top sixth form college

• The University of Liverpool Maths School was our top rated sixth form in the North West.
• The highly-specialised school teaches just four A Levels, but boasted an average grade of A- last year.
• A Levels are just the start for most of its 106 students, who also frequently work with university academics.
• The school takes in promising pupils from all different backgrounds, setting them up for successful STEM careers.

Extraordinary talent can bud from anywhere, and one North West sixth form has committed to seeking it out - and nurturing it until it blossoms into something great.

In our regional league tables measuring the performance of state-funded sixth form schools and colleges across the UK, the University of Liverpool Maths School took out the top spot in the North West, among some fierce competition. In the 2022/23 school year (the most recent data available, until this year’s data has been finalised and published), it had an exceptional A Level point score of 47.93 - giving it an average grade of A-.

The school was also rated ‘outstanding’ across the board by Ofsted, the government’s education inspector, in its most recent review, which looks at quality of education, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and student safeguarding.

We caught up with headteacher Damian Haigh about the selective college’s unique curriculum, as well as what makes it a great place to be a student - and what it takes to secure a spot. This is what he told us:

The University of Liverpool Maths School and its students

The University of Liverpool Mathematics School is a specialist 16-to-19 sixth form school, housed in a university building on its central Liverpool campus. It’s fairly new, only having opened in September 2020.

Mr Haigh, a maths teacher of nearly 30 years, has been the school’s headteacher since its inception - and worked on getting it up and running while it was still in the project stage. With just over a hundred students, the school is a pretty big contrast from his past life as an assistant head teacher at Wilmslow High School in Cheshire, which houses more than 2,000.

The University of Liverpool Maths School is selective, meaning that while it is a fees-free state-funded school, it admits students based on how well they meet certain criteria. But Mr Haigh said they very rarely turned applicants away, with some eager young people travelling up to 40 kilometres each day to attend.

“They have to be really keen on maths, because we do an awful lot of maths. But the students are really, really varied, actually,” he continued. “I really welcome applications from students from all over the region to places at the school. If they love maths and want to do maths A Levels, then they I would really encourage them to to check us out.

“Most people who apply for a place get offered a place. The only reason that we wouldn't offer somebody a place would be if we thought they weren't going to enjoy it and weren't going to thrive here. Other than that, we're really keen to have everybody come and be part of what we do.”

Standing out

The University of Liverpool Maths School teaches just four A Levels; maths, further maths, physics and computer science, “plus a whole load of other stuff on top of that to some of the most amazing students across Merseyside and the North West”. But A Levels are just a small part of what the school offers, with a unique and varied curriculum that goes above and beyond - meeting its academically-advanced students where they stand.

The titular university is one of the school’s key sponsors. It is currently housed in a university building - and all going well, may soon move to a more permanent home, a “lovely old building” in the north end of campus. But the institution is also vital in providing pupils with that extra academic challenge.

“In the specialist maths school system, you're required to have a university with a strong maths department to support you in your work. And that's actually really important for us because our students are very high potential students,” Mr Haigh said. “Sometimes they're students who might come to us already having learned a lot of the content of A Level maths, sometimes even A Level further maths, and I will use university lecturers [and] researchers to help me with extending those students.”

That meant young people might work with staff from the university on research projects, physics experiments, or even competitions. This classwork was supplemented with field trips to CERN and other major European research institutions - generously funded by donations for families who couldn’t otherwise afford it - and visits to top UK universities like Cambridge and Imperial College London.

A great place to learn

Part of what made the school such a great place to learn was the young people themselves, and their zeal for the subject.

“If you go and listen in when our students are in a room with no staff around, if you just listen in at the door, then sometimes they'll be talking about the normal stuff that teenagers are talking about,” Mr Haigh said. “But a lot of the time, they're actually just doing maths and science together. And they're just genuinely having fun talking about how to code and how to solve problems and things like that. It's a brilliant peer group to be part of.”

But this didn’t mean that they didn’t have to face or overcome any challenges, with the headteacher saying many pupils came to them very shy, or introverted, or lacking confidence. Some had even experienced bullying or social exclusion in their previous schools because they loved maths, and were seen as “different” by their peers.

“When they come to us, suddenly they're in a much safer place. They're able to be themselves, and then we're able to take advantage of that newfound sense of safety in challenging them to go further with their maths, but also to go further with their team-working skills, their leadership skills and their communication skills,” he added.

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Community

While the University of Liverpool Maths School didn’t tend to run as many community events as other schools might, they were no less present in the Merseyside and wider North West community. Part of that was outreach work - built on the recognition that great minds, and young people who will go on to change the world, can come from anywhere.

“Every week we send teachers out from here to schools all over the region to run maths clubs or physics clubs, or do a bit of extra revision work for the top end of GCSE,” Mr Haigh said. “The reason that we do that is that we are very keen to identify talent in areas where there is disadvantage.”

As a result, they had students come to them that have had a tough time in life, whether that be growing up in more deprived households, or having lived through serious and traumatic childhood experiences. They also had students coming to them who have had a great childhood, and “maths teachers who've been able to challenge them and support them”.

“But they're not all like that,” he continued. “So we want to find the talent wherever it is so that we can nurture it, develop it, and send those students - whatever their starting points - we want to send them on to great success at university and to have great careers in science, technology, engineering and maths.”

The University of Liverpool Maths School also made our list of the top 25 sixth form schools and colleges for A Levels in all of England. To learn more, check out our league table here.