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

[noblegiraffe]

Says the front page of the Telegraph. Sunak's new big plan.

It's not going to happen, they know it won't happen, and they were told it couldn't happen in 2017 when they read Prof Smith's review into post-16 maths education that they commissioned.

We haven't got enough maths teachers, this is just bullshit posturing. Fret ye not.

You know you can do degrees at college right?

But that's besides the point

So your kid who did maths and further maths A-level at 14 is going to study their maths degree at a college? Are you sure?

My kid is doing her GCSEs this year and CANNOT WAIT to quit Maths...of course we all need Maths in our everyday lives but I don't think the curriculum teaches enough about practical things like interest rates and inflation. Maybe they could teach that from post-16, instead of the ridiculously complicated rubbish they memorise now.

Yup I'd agree we need the option to go slower at primary. I see people come through with no real understanding of place value or fractions . Stuff that should be there by Yr 6 - so the extra 5 yrs at secondary seems to just go over their heads.

Where I live it's a compulsory subject in all levels of schooling.

I can't say it's made any difference to ability, I have one kid who's naturally good with maths and another who is still useless after 12 years of schooling.

I agree that the money would be better spent improving the maths curriculum in the early years, when their little brains are like sponges and they haven't yet absorbed the idea that maths is for nerds.

This ^

Also being able to drop maths if you passed GCSE was a motivator. You were rewarded with not having to take maths.

I still think there should be an alternative GCSE in arithmetic or numeracy.

Although having taught maths to 16+ student there is no feeling quite as good as a teenager saying, "Oh I get that now, I didn't understand it at school"

Also being able to drop maths if you passed GCSE was a motivator. You were rewarded with not having to take maths.

You're also rewarded with the immense benefits that having GCSE maths brings!

Rediculous nonsense. We don't have enough Maths teachers to teach Maths to 16. Where are all the extra Maths teachers coming from? Stupid Richi speaks before he has the facts in front of him.

Few people need stuff like calculus and all that stuff. Even using pythrogras I've used once in 30 years after leaving school.

It would make more sense to teach accounting, everyone has bank accounts, but few seem to know how to calculate interest or tax. And lots of people end up in debt.

It's never compulsory Art or PE I notice. Funny that!

The idea isn't too bad in and of itself. The UK is an outlier in its early specialisation. The problem is that Sunak has no intention of funding it.

The changes to GCSE and A-Level have resulted in narrower curricula. Pupils are doing fewer GCSE subjects now and not starting 4 subjects at A-Level. MFL take-up has plummeted.

The response here to the issue of an adequate education in maths is so different from the Irish approach.

Most people require numeracy skills- which is completely different to continuing to be made to study academic maths.
It's like good literacy skills are totally different to passing GCSE English/English Lit.
We have completely lost our way with our curriculum in schools.

Why maths and not art? The value placed on some subjects over others is irrational. Young people have different talents and interests...as a retired teacher I can say the way to lose more teachers is to have to teach classes of kids who don't want to be there.
The government would do better to invest in the education system and staff we have now....suspect this is just a dead cat anyway!

Irish, French, German, American, Canadian, IB...
In my opinion many social science courses really could use a higher level of maths than GCSE.

As for the arts, I think the current approach at GCSE needs to be fixed before changes at 16+ can be considered.

There will be enough maths teachers for private schools though and that's what matters to Rishi. He won't mind if sixth form maths is taught by the caretaker in state schools. Don't want those pesky state school kids being taught to too high a standard. They might steal uni places from private kids!

Medical science might be a better compulsory subject. Because thanks to the tories repeatedly crapping all over the NHS, it won't be long before we are operating on ourselves.

I'd rather they used all the extra maths teachers they would need to provide smaller classes for strugglers in y10-y13.

You don't need to teach interest rates and inflation directly. They are really simple to grasp if your maths foundation is strong. I have a PhD in Engineering and was never directly taught those. I learned double entry accounting and credit/debit from reading a few articles on line. (Now using gnucash for budgeting which uses double entry accounting). I've never been confused by financial speak with compound interests, fractions, ratios, unit prices, etc.

I think the problem is children already failing in foundation maths in KS1 and KS2. I see so many in primary who don't have a strong foundation in number bonds or times tables. I'm saddened by parents in whatsapp group saying they can't help their kids revise their KS2 or KS3 maths.

We definitely don't need everyone doing 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.

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.

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 😳🙄😩.

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?

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.