Compulsory maths for all students in England till they're 18

Total dead cat. Appeals to those who hate the woke and start sentences with 'Kids these days'
NHS is still collapsing. Brexit is a disaster. We are all fucked. But still, Maths.

Perhaps the teaching of maths should include an understanding of why it is important and how much of what is taken for granted in modern day would fall apart without it.

Do you never use time? Manage a budget? Buy food from a supermarket? Go to a building or travel over a bridge that manages to stay upright? Go to an appointment? Plan a trip? Care what the weather will be like? Have any interest in the spread of a pandemic?

I think all the core subjects should be continued until 18 like college in the US, and you 'major' in certain subjects. Dropping so many subjects at 14 means many people don't get to find a subject they may have a real passion for. It will involve changing the way we view, train and pay teachers but a big shake up is needed.

Good idea

As for those saying children needs to be taught 'functional maths' to understand their finance. I don't know how you will teach it if the kids are already being failed at primary level.

Both my mum and MIL are terrible at maths. For example, with MIL, neither DH and I can get her to understand that consolidating many loans into a single one with a higher APR% and a broker fee does not save her money. She only sees her monthly payment, failing to understand term of loan and interest rate. My mum can't work out percentages without a % on her calculator, can't figure out 2/5 isn't a majority and is the same as 40% or 60% off.

And recently, we all have examples of people failing to understand the energy price cap, with a standing rate (fixed cost) and unit cost (variable depends on use). The use of a illustrative household further confuses things.

For budgeting, I think the use of new banking apps will help a lot. They predict money left in account after regular direct debits. Many also support envelope budgetting.

This is very interesting.

Fuck knows why pushing data about is so well paid. Maths is boring and irrelevant after GCSE.

"who have"

which has

The grammar, holy batman the grammar

Yes, and some basic understanding of statistics would be good for understanding risk etc.
This should be stuff any teacher should be able to understand and teach.

A very interesting thread, as always @noblegiraffe. I have several observations.

The issue with A-levels is that you can easily never write more than a short para from 16-21 (if you opt for certain maths/science A-levels and subsequent degrees) or never do anything remotely quantitative from 16-21 (if you opt for certain arts/humanities A-levels and subsequent degrees). I am not sure that is a good thing and, if you dive into the detail, you often see that year in industry and graduate schemes have to spend time bringing the 'neglected' element back up to par.

Perhaps a better approach, to avoid wholesale reform, would be to ensure all A-levels have a balancing element within them eg science subjects have essay components; arts subjects have quantitative components. I did O-levels and General Studies as one of four. It definitely acted as a balancing force across the science/arts divide that existed then also at A-level. I am not suggesting the return of General Studies but am arguing its demise has left a gap. Core Maths is a good idea that some schools and colleges execute well but coverage is patchy.

A final point, regarding maths (or indeed any subject) is that you never know when an aspect of the curriculum might become very relevant in the future. When learning algebra in the 1970s, I had not idea it would be directly relevant to becoming a spreadsheet whiz on Lotus123 in the 1980s.

This party has lost the plot completely. They are trying to distract us all from the misery we are facing. And instead of improving lives of nurses or healthcare staff or primary and secondary teachers, they ask the children to stay in for more maths lessons.

I would like to see numeracy and financial education added rather than outright maths.

The number of people who can't work out a gas bill or understand interest rates is shocking but it's not really an extension of 'school maths' that would improve things.

These things wouldn't necessarily require a maths teacher so more likely to be achievable.

I have a maths learning disability and failed my maths GCSE the job centre has made me do several maths courses and I applied for many colleges but they all insisted I had maths.

This was 20 years ago eventually after I lied on my CV and said I'd passed maths I was able to find fulfilling employment and lived happily ever after.
It's crazy how my life would have been so much different if I hadn't.
I'd probably still be a regular at the job centre attending maths courses one after the other, maths isn't for everyone but they still deserve a job and a future without having to lie.

Fiddling while Rome burns.

Who's going to teach it? Nobody! Load of nonsense. Honestly, the sooner the Tories are out the better.

Employers might not need it.

But every single one of us needs to know enough maths to be able to manage our money, day to day.

It would be better to teach real world maths to those who fail otherwise.

Everyone should understand percentages (discounts in shops), budgeting and interest rates (including compound interest because that's mortgages and other loans).

We do everyone a massive disservice by saying 'employers don't need it'. That leaves people vulnerable to being fleeced and getting into financial problems - whether it be in Tesco or taking out a loan.

This should not be GCSE maths. That's largely pointless and flogging a dead horse. Everyone can understand why you need to know about the above though and it makes sense. That's more difficult to argue with. And actually I don't think you need full on maths teachers to teach a much narrower set of skills like this either.

Singapore is top in secondary school maths in the world and even it doesn't have this policy. Most students do maths to age 18 because the most common form of A levles in Singapore is BCME (Biology, Chemistry, Maths, Economics), or PCME (Physics Chemistry Maths Economics). These are such common combinations that they are abbreviations and when you were asked what subjects you are doing for a levels, many people would just use the abbreviations and everyone would know what you are talking about. The ones who don't do A levels go to polytechnics where the majority of the disciplines are technical and they probably do some form of maths by default.

You can obviously choose arts and humanities a levels in whatever combination you like but a minority choose this. I chose to do IB where I did have to do maths as well as science till age 18 (though I chose to major in English, History and Economics).

The reason why almost all students do maths to a level standard in singapore isn't because the government forces them to but because the students and their parents know its useful. Most Singaporean students are also strong in maths (I was the worst in maths in my class but I got As for both additional maths and maths at GCSE; getting any less is like a failing grade lol).

He should be trying to improve standards in maths at secondary level; why would anyone not choose to do a subject they are good in

When I went through a different country's curriculum, maths was compulsory until 18 BUT for the last two years of school it was split into theoretical/academic streams and what was then called 'maths in society' - the sort of maths that underpin the stuff you're talking about - statistics, probability, interest, data interpretation.

It's crazy that we have a system that says at 16 'hey if you're not good at or don't like calculus, you don't really need to learn any more about numbers.'

A broader curriculum all around to 18 is what we need, including some kind of maths and English. We are huge outliers in having such big exams at 16 and then narrowing and specialising so much, so early.

We would do well to learn from counties that mandate native language and some kind of maths (whether theoretical or functional) plus other subjects until 18.

Of course the massive shortage of teachers and poor pay and conditions is a huge issue; it will be interesting to see how the projected decline in the school population will impact and interact with this. I suspect it won't be enough but the reality is that the system we have now is quite, quite mad and created for a different time and different economy.

A rare step in the right direction to recognise that better maths skills would aid productivity (and basic citizenship) right across the economy.

Completely agree with this. Totally unnecessary. What would be useful at post 16 is life maths. Managing household budget, understanding interest rates, getting a loan or mortgage, why loan sharks are a bad idea, that type of thing.

Big agree

I dropped maths at the end of fourth year (Scotland) because I was terrible at it and it was a better use of my final two years to take subjects I had a hope in hell of passing. This is a stupid idea.

It's a dead cat story to divert everyone's attention away from strikes and the collapse of the NHS. Not only is it a ridiculous idea to force kids to carry on with maths, presumably at the expense of other subjects that they might actually want to learn, because they won't have enough study time to fit it all in, the Govt hasn't met its recruitment targets for maths teachers since 2012/13, so where are the staff coming from to teach it?

What we actually need to teach children (and adults for that matter!) is how to understand stats - what became mindblowingly obvious during the pandemic and the myriad false stories and conspiracy theories doing the rounds was that most people have a tentative at best grasp of how to read and understand stats 😳🙄😩.

I take on board all the points raised about why this is a bad idea. However, my DD achieved a 7 in GCSE maths (i.e. a decent grade) and her what I would call "basic everyday maths" is absolutely woeful .She can't, for example, without lots of thought and use of her phone calculator, tell you that if it's 10 to 3 now and the bus comes at 3.15, then she has 25 minutes to wait. Or how much a 15% deposit would be. Or whether it's cheaper to buy apples in a pre-packaged bag than loose. I'm sure she must have covered all this at GCSE, but she seems unable to apply it.

So I'd be all in favour of more "useful" maths skills being taught, but maybe this a reworking of the KS4 curriculum (which might incentive more of the children who think they hate maths) rather than more maths to 18.

How would this work in practice?
4 A levels, one being compulsory math?
Or 3 A levels one of which has to be math? Horrible.