To think we should teach kids about mortgages and pensions instead of making them do Maths till 18?

[malificent7]

Never have i had to work out the area of a triangle since school so why isn't Sunak proposing we teach kids proper life skills instead? My dad never taught me and would have been better placed lecturing me on mortgages than harping on about pythagoras ( again...never used).

Has he actually said what type of maths?

It won't happen anyway short term.
They can't find enough maths teachers as it is.

People only say this in hindsight, if they had tried to teach you about mortgage & pensions etc when at school, kids would have rolled their eyes and said "i don't care i'm 16, not 66".

A few kids would have taken it in but chances are they are the kids whos parents take it upon themselves to educate kids about these things.

Hopefully it will be the sort of maths and arithmetic that will help with understanding mortgages, budgeting etc

Why is it up to my partner (teacher) to teach your kids about mortgages and pensions, when there's nothing stopping you and all the other parents teaching their own kids about them?

the maths for mortgaging and budgeting is incredibly simple.

You're responsible for financial education of your own child.

Mortgages / budgets / pensions aren't particularly hard maths. Surely this sort of life learning is taught by parents not schools?

Learning about Pythagoras and other theorems is there to test learning and understanding surely, it's like the things you learn in science class or English - no one's ever asked me to analyse a poem since I left school!

I assume he thinks better general mathematical literacy will support these kinds of life skills in general and tbh I am not a fan of his but I don’t disagree.

I don’t necessarily think it’s the job of teaching staff to give this level of detail on very applied maths such as mortgages .

Also I don’t see that it’s an either/or thing. Nothing to stop people learning Pythagoras and how mortgages work.

Maths is directly relevant to mortgages & pensions though. Parents should be teaching financial common sense. Teachers have enough to do.

Mortgages and pensions are not exactly difficult to understand

I agree that children would probably take very little notice learning about mortgages, pensions etc whilst at school as they wouldn't think they were relevant - a frankly for many of today's generation they'll probably struggle to get a mortgage for many many years after leaving school, if at all.
I think young adults should watch Martin Lewis on tv. They'd learn and remember more from that programme than they would listening to a teacher when they're 16.

You're given the tools in maths lessons to work out how to run your finances. It's up to you to use those tools. As a PP said, most kids will just learn it and regurgitate it for an exam then won't use it again (much like Pythagoras theory)

Things like Pythagoras and trigonometry are vital for understanding electronics and engineering.

If you taught your kids how much the banks screw them over then they would never take a mortgage out full stop. Then everyone's massively inflated house price caused by over lending would disappear in a puff of smoke.

"It is well enough that people do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe their would be a revolution before tomorrow morning" - Henry Ford.

Credit and compound interest would probably be more relevant to 16/17 year olds

Those are both maths topics.

If you want the function aspects of functional maths made even clearer, fair enough.

I disagree with this.
I teach 11 year olds maths.
One of the things I do is a unit all about ‘life’ maths. We look at salaries, taxes, mortgages, bills etc…
They love it. Totally fascinated. Endless interesting questions.
I 100% agree that any extension of compulsory maths should focus on maths for life skills.

I agree that children would probably take very little notice learning about mortgages, pensions etc whilst at school as they wouldn't think they were relevant

I agree. Also, there's not much to 'learn' about them, is there?!

Mortgages and pensions are maths. So YABU.
But YWNBU to say that from 16-18 the extra maths should include applied maths for these life events.

Absolutely. Children should be taught interest rates, budgeting and inflation.

However if we can't get them to a decent level of maths after 11 years at school I'm not sure why anyone thinks another 2 years will crack the problem.

well, when I saw that they want to extend maths to 18, I did assuem that they were not going to try and teach A level maths to all 17 and 18 year olds.

But I do love the idea of teaching life skill maths.
Things like budgeting, planning menus with shopping lists, mortgages, credit cards, cost of overdraft.
There is huge scope for sensible life skill maths to be taught and it would do all our kids good to try the exercise - you earn xxxx and your rent is yyy, work out your utilities bills and how much money you have left.
Now make choices about how to spend the rest of your money, food, drink, night out etc.

Not all parents have the skills to pass on. If you earn very little, pay rent and bills and if you are lucky have anything left, mortgages etc mean nothing its another world. Children of those parents may not have it on their radar as its not a subject that will generally be brought up at home.

They are already taught in school about bank accounts mortgages etc

I had a "money management" lesson at 6th form as part of PSHE where we learnt about mortgages. Most people didn't pay attention, because we were 16... I've recently bought a house, aged 32. So I learnt it half my life ago...

IMO the life skill isn't pythagoras or mortgages. The life skill is being able to find and teach yourself the information you need, when you need it. People should not be leaving school assuming they've learnt everything useful they'll ever need to know.

If school didn't teach you to learn, then it definitely failed you.

I’m yet to look but we’ve been sent a budgeting presentation from 6th form PSHE

More isn’t required, they’ve covered what is needed.

I can’t say that I ever used any skills I ever learnt in art, English lit, French, or even History have been particularly useful in my life, however maths and statistics have been very useful both in day to day managing of finances, budgeting, understanding mortgages, stamp duty, tax, and in my career in a research field. Basic maths is used every time you follow a recipe or adapt a recipe for more or fewer people, or if you want to know whether your monthly income will cover your newly inflated energy bills.