It’s Not Okay To Be Bad At Maths

Rishi Sunak warns it’s not okay to be bad at maths’ as he steps up his push for everyone to stick with the subject until the age of 18.

The Prime Minister will insist that the subject is as important as reading and failure to drive up standards is hurting the economy.

The attack on the anti-maths culture in the United Kingdom, an issue Rishi Sunak has made a personal priority, will come in an address at an academy in London.

He’s set to announce a new advisory group to look into a possible new maths qualification for those aged 16 to 18, with ministers acknowledging that not everyone will do an A-Level.

However, critics accused the premier of reheating prior pledges and attempting to distract from the continuing strike activity in schools. Opponents complained there are not enough maths teachers to enforce the idea.

While the United Kingdom has grown in international education league tables over the last decade, it remains one of the poorest for numeracy in the 38-member OECD group of developed countries.

More than 8 million adults have numeracy skills below those expected of a nine-year-old and about a third of students fail to pass GCSE maths.

Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of disadvantaged students don’t have basic maths skills at 16.

Rishi Sunak is expected to say that they’ve got to change this anti-maths mindset and that they’ve got to start prizing numeracy for what it is, a key skill every bit as essential as reading, and that he won’t sit back and allow this cultural sense that it’s okay to be bad at maths to put our children at a disadvantage and that his campaign to transform their national approach to maths is something nice to have. It’s about changing how people value maths in this country.

He will add that if they’re going to grow the economy not just over the next two years, but the next 20, they simply can’t allow poor numeracy to cost the economy tens of billions a year or to leave people twice as likely to be unemployed as those with competent numeracy.

That we have to fundamentally change the education system so it gives our young people the knowledge and skills they need, and that our businesses need, to compete with the best in the world.

Mathematicians, education chiefs and business leaders will be assigned to the new advisory group, which will advise ministers on the teaching content which will boost young people’s opportunities.

I’m all for learning maths, but they should do this up till a student is 16, not 18 because they actually don’t need to stretch this out that long, and learning something for longer doesn’t necessarily equate to success, there should be other factors in play here like motivation.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister is shockingly out of touch, and he’s barking up the wrong tree, and this will just be a waste of time because nowadays youngsters want to be influencers, much more than they want to learn maths.

Pharmaceuticals, engineering and manufacturing, they’re real-life activities that require a higher level of maths, but unfortunately, we have had 40 years of our politicians de-industrialising the United Kingdom, hence why kids have less motivation to learn maths, and that’s already been seen alongside chemistry, physics and languages with little benefit to them after they leave school.

Of course, maths is just as essential as English, but this simply requires basic maths, but instead, they will be teaching advanced maths, which is totally unnecessary for numerous individuals who will likely never use it.