Sunak's maths reform gets an "F"
The Prime Minister has unveiled plans for all children to study maths until the age of 18. He said there is a need to “reimagine our approach to numeracy” and that “letting our children out into the world without those skills is letting our children down”.
Labour said it will be an “empty pledge” without the provision of sufficient resources, such as qualified maths teachers.
The impracticality of the proposal highlighted by Labour is a given. The Government has not hit the recruitment target for maths teachers since 2012-13.
Downing Street has been unable to reform house building or childcare, or do much else they set out to achieve. It is unlikely that this policy objective will go anywhere fast.
However, what is left unmentioned by both the Government and the ‘Opposition’ is why children are so poor at maths when they leave school now? What children need is an education which will give them functional English and maths skills. This used to be achievable way before the age of 18.
Peter Hitchens, columnist at The Mail on Sunday, highlighted in his recent book about the education system, A Revolution Betrayed, that the decline in standards is especially apparent in objective subjects such as mathematics.
In a column for The Guardian almost 20 years ago, Jenni Russell emphasised this point, citing the Engineering Council’s report on the decline in maths skills based on an identical test they had been giving students each year. The end of selection by ability, rising class sizes, a fall in the supply of good teachers, and a less tough syllabus, gutted academic standards.
In response to the Prime Minister’s announcement, Mr Hitchens told Bournbrook Magazine that “the failings in British maths teaching surely aren't that children are not taught maths for long enough, but that they are not trained in the basic hard graft which can turn anyone into a decent mathematician”.
He added:
“I'm thinking here of times tables, the one part of my schooling I still use regularly, and the repetitive exercises in arithmetic, algebra and geometry which play the same part in using figures as grammar does in speaking structured languages such as French.
“I had the benefit of all this until I was about 12… mathematics are as complex as music, and you will never understand them anyway if you do not first know what six nines are, without thinking about it.”
While Mr Sunak’s announcement may turn out to be a gimmick, which gets lost in the pile of proposals which go nowhere, what is clear is that the Prime Minister has not got the diagnosis right about innumeracy, and therefore his proposed treatment is condemned to disappoint those who wish to see standards re-emerge.
