Maths schools in the news

This page collects the coverage itself — outlet, date, headline, link — rather than retelling it in narrative form. For the fuller story behind the sector's origins, see our history piece; this page is the reference list, and it leans toward independent journalism over schools' own press releases, which are labelled as such wherever they appear.

A note on method: every headline quoted below was checked against the outlet or an independent mirror before publication. One headline we'd initially been given turned out not to exist in that form — it conflated two separate 2024 and 2025 stories — and a second had two wording errors. Both are corrected here rather than repeated. See our methodology for how we handle this generally.

The 1729 Maths School

The single biggest story in this sector for 2025–26: a fee-charging, need-blind-bursaried 11-18 school, privately funded outside the state free-school system entirely. See our full school profile for what's confirmed about it.

• 27 May 2023

  Schools Week — "How a billionaire plans to make English pupils 'world's best at maths'". Early coverage of Alex Gerko's philanthropy (Axiom Maths, Maths Circles) — this predates the 1729 Maths School's own founding and naming, but it's the origin of the funding relationship that produced it.

• 17 Feb 2025

  Financial News — "XTX boss Alex Gerko funds new maths school in London". The first substantial press coverage of the school itself.

• 16 May 2025

  The Times — "Billionaire to open maths school for the most talented children". National coverage of the opening plan (paywalled; verified via the outlet's own posting of the headline).

• 1 Nov 2025

  The i Paper — "Could you pass the test for 11-year-olds to get into a £50,000 school for free?". Coverage of the admissions test and the need-blind bursary model that makes a nominally fee-charging school free for most of its intake.

• 30 Nov 2025

  Financial Times — "Trading firm XTX donates £26mn for maths research at UK universities". A related but distinct donation, to university-level maths research rather than the school itself, from the same funder (paywalled; verified via three independent citations of the exact headline).

• Feb 2026

  Mill Hill Education Group (the school's own announcement, not independent press) — introduces the founding teaching team, including Founding Head Nick Hamshaw.

Results, rankings and awards

• Aug 2025

  Results day across the network produced several standout stories in their own right rather than just numbers — see the full results comparison for every school.

• 5 Dec 2025

  Sunday Times Parent Power guide names King's Maths School "Sixth Form College of the Year for Academic Excellence" for the second year running, and University of Liverpool Maths School "State Sixth Form College of the Year".

• Feb 2026

  The Times ranks Lancaster University School of Mathematics the 5th-best sixth form in the country — reported via the school's own coverage of the ranking; we could not independently source the original Times list.

• 9 Jun 2026

  Ofsted rates Cambridge Maths School "Exceptional" — its top category — in every area of its first full inspection. Covered by the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Independent. See our Ofsted page for what "Exceptional" actually means relative to a standard Outstanding rating.

Policy: the free-school review that nearly sank Durham and Nottingham

A genuine scare for the two pre-opening schools, playing out over more than a year.

• 7 Feb 2025

  Tes — "Maths schools at risk in lowest performing regions". First warning that Durham and Nottingham were caught up in a DfE review of 44 unopened free-school projects.

• 11 Dec 2025

  Schools Week — "Nightmare before Christmas: 46 free school projects scrapped and 58 special schools in limbo". The review's outcome — both maths schools confirmed to proceed, one of only 16 of the 44 projects spared.

• 15 Dec 2025

  Tes — "Eton-backed free schools among projects spared DfE review". Follow-up coverage of the same review outcome.

Both schools still carry only a provisional opening — see the Durham and Nottingham profiles for what's actually confirmed since.

The founding years, in the press (2013–2017)

Kept deliberately compact here — the full history piece tells this story properly, with the Cummings/Perelman origin and the six-year stall that followed.

• 21 Jan 2013

  DfE — announces Exeter Mathematics School, the second of the founding pair after King's College London.

• 19 Nov 2013

  DfE — Michael Gove congratulates competition winners, confirming both schools for a September 2014 opening.

• 29 Jul 2014

  Tes — "Specialist maths free schools fail to spark university interest". The first skeptical press treatment, days before the schools opened.

Research and sector commentary

• 9 Oct 2024

  The Conversation — "Maths schools top the A-level rankings – and their students only study Stem subjects", by Harry Richardson (PhD candidate, University of Leeds). The most substantive independent analysis of the sector we found — see our history piece for what it found on FSM representation.

• Oct 2025

  The Observatory for Mathematical Education publishes a U-Maths-commissioned ten-year evaluation, covered by Exeter, King's and other partner universities' own press offices. See our piece on what this evidence does and doesn't show before treating it as independently verified — it's the sector's own commissioned research, not arm's-length.

• Feb 2026

  Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce — a sector report highlighting Aston Maths School's widening-participation mission.

Leadership changes

• 23 Feb 2026

  University of Liverpool — announces Dan Vickery as incoming headteacher from September 2026, succeeding founding headteacher Damian Haigh.

The next thing likely to generate real coverage is 2026 results day, 13 August — Surrey Maths School's first-ever results and Cambridge's second set are both due then. We'll add to this page as it happens rather than let it go stale.