“Online Check” in “Mathe-sicher-können” project to be available to all schools in Hesse from 2025/26 academic year

Considerable numbers of children struggle with key math skills when they transition from elementary to secondary school. The “Mathe sicher können” (roughly translatable as “Doing math with confidence”) program, developed at the German Centre for Mathematics Teacher Education (DZLM), seeks to help this state of affairs by combining robust diagnosis of difficulties with tried-and-trusted methods of support. With the commencement of the current academic year (2025/26), the program has made the associated “Online Check” available to all schools in the federal state of Hesse, helping teachers of grades 4 to 6 to pinpoint gaps in learners’ understanding and offer tailored help with closing them.

“Mathe sicher können” has been in continuous development at the DZLM since 2010, with Prof. Dr. Susanne Prediger (TU Dortmund and IPN) and Prof. Dr. Christoph Selter (TU Dortmund) leading on the work. The digitalization of the processes used by the program to diagnose knowledge gaps has been in progress since 2022, in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF) and Hesse’s ministry of education and opportunities (HMKB). The “Mathe sicher können Online Check” (MSK-OC) now enables math teachers to ascertain their learners’ understanding of mathematical concepts with a few clicks and receive automatic feedback to help them provide individualized support for eliminating knowledge gaps.

The “Online Check” was piloted at selected schools in Hesse in the spring of 2025; the results confirmed that it is intuitive to use and has direct benefits in terms of supporting learners. In introducing the MSK-OC statewide, Hesse is following the states of Hamburg and Brandenburg in taking a significant step forward in the use of data to advance teaching.

“Individual support […] and teachers’ lives made easier”

Speaking in the state parliament of Hesse, Dr. Lösel, a Hesse government official, stressed the program’s political significance:

Recording from the forty-fourth plenary session of the state parliament of Hesse (accessed August 28, 2025, 14:28). Dr. Lösel speaks (in German) from 16’44”

How the “Online Check” works

The “Mathe Sicher können Online Check” is fully integrated into Schulportal Hessen, the state’s official internet gateway for schools, which has over a million users. In the space of a few minutes, teachers can run tests for diagnosing gaps in mathematical understanding and receive an automatic analysis of a particular learner’s strengths and support needs. As well as analyzing individual errors and error patterns, the Online Check generates specific suggestions for tailored learning objectives and provides teaching and learning materials to go with them.

Training network to launch in October

Hesse is working with the DZLM to give schools optimum support in using the package by setting up networks for the provision of online training – schools can register to take part until the closing date of September 26, 2025. The networks will begin holding their online meetings between October 20 and November 14.

Links

• “Mathe sicher können” website, issued by the DZLM (in German): https://mathe-sicher-koennen.dzlm.de

About the DZLM

Founded in 2011 and supported financially for a period of ten years by the Deutsche Telekom Stiftung, the German Centre for Mathematics Teacher Education (DZLM) became incorporated into the IPN in 2021. In a network of professors working at a total of twelve higher education institutions, the DZLM works closely with educational practitioners to conduct research and development around in-service training and support for mathematics teachers.

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