Maths to 18? Why Sunak's Proposal is Misguided

 by Emma Pope

The last decade has proven that the Conservative government is not afraid to alter our education system. After all, it was the former education secretary Michael Gove who orchestrated the controversial reform of GCSEs and A-levels in 2014. The same government raised the school leaving age, from sixteen to seventeen, and then eighteen in 2015. Rishi Sunak, the third conservative to attempt the leadership role in just twelve months, is now proposing his own changes. In his first speech of 2023, Sunak unveiled his plans to make studying maths compulsory until the age of eighteen.

On paper, this change may sound positive; in a future with increasing reliance on the digital world and coding, an understanding of mathematical concepts is valuable. Data shows it can open doorways to plenty of opportunities and make you more employable. Maths is important, and every person ought to have a basic grasp of it, I am in no way denying that. But in reality, this change is unfeasible and unfair to thousands of young people.

 The first glaring issue is where Sunak intends to find hundreds, if not thousands, of additional maths-qualified teachers. The department of education sets annual targets for teacher recruitment and training, yet despite significantly lowering these targets, they have failed to reach them in nine out of the last ten years. The current system is already facing a concerningly large shortage of teachers and is failing to retain the teachers it does have. In a 2021 survey, 44% of teachers said they intended to leave the profession within five years, largely due to increasingly high workloads and low pay. Making maths compulsory for a further two years will likely only exacerbate the shortfall of qualified teachers. If Sunak cares about the quality of the education system as much as he claims to, he cannot risk having his key subject widely taught by non-subject specialists (a practice which many desperate schools are already employing), it is counterintuitive.

How this will be funded is equally unclear. Whilst Sunak’s government has recently pledged an additional £2.3 billion for schools, no money was allocated to sixth forms and colleges. Post-sixteen education is continuing to face huge financial pressure, yet will be expected by Sunak to provide extra tuition, seemingly without the government funding to back it up. In a cost-of-living crisis that is stretching government budgets, infrastructure and services to breaking point, where this money will come from is a mystery. Perhaps Sunak could use the maths skills he values so deeply to enlighten all of us.

During his speech, Sunak justified his concept by explaining that "in a world where data is everywhere and statistics underpin every job, letting our children out into that world without those skills is letting our children down”. According to Sunak then, every job that is about far more than maths, like the thousands in sectors such as the arts, hospitality and trade is not worthy of consideration. If we were to agree with Sunak, that statistics “underpin” our entire lives, then why is the GCSE curriculum so devoid of them? Why did I spend hours trying to make my brain understand circle theorems and expanding algebraic fractions rather than being taught about data analysis and statistics? I challenge Rishi Sunak to demonstrate his usage of even half of the GCSE maths curriculum in his role as prime minister. Fifty years ago doing maths by hand may have been crucial; today almost every one of us carries technology in our pocket that is thousands of times more powerful than the NASA computers that landed a rocket on the moon. Complex software is entirely capable, and is regularly used to perform most of the calculations I was forced to learn. Surely understanding tax, basic economics, data analysis and coding would be far more valuable in “underpin[ing]” our society yet those, along with most basic life skills, are never touched upon in the mandatory curriculum. If Sunak wants to avoid “letting our children down”, he has already failed. The issue is not the need for more maths, it is the need for the maths curriculum to be modernised so that it lines up with the real-world utilisation of maths in the 21st century. Realistically the vast majority of us will go through life only requiring the basic levels of maths we have mastered by age thirteen.

The only thing that no person can ever regain is time - no matter what humanity does, time will continue to flow and we cannot alter that. Time is therefore arguably the world's most valuable resource. A young person can only study or achieve a certain amount of things whilst they are at school. Making maths compulsory for those who do not want to take it, either because they do not enjoy it or because they would not do well would lead to two scenarios. Pupils would have to dedicate huge chunks of time to trying to understand it in order to avoid failure, detracting time from revising for other subjects, valuable extracurricular activities and the relaxation time that is crucial for mental health and good results. Most universities need good grades across all three A levels, if this is the qualification that would be made mandatory it means many people applying to courses totally unrelated to maths (because they are not good at it) may lose out on university places. The alternative is those that do not like the subject or feel they will fail it regardless simply do not try and inevitably fail. This would pull the UK down the international education league tables, something I am certain Mr Sunak would like to avoid.

 Placing such a heavy emphasis on maths, the subject that is already the most popular A-level, makes it significantly harder for those who want to study arts or humanities to have time to do so. Especially as pupils are encouraged to study subjects that work well together; physics, business studies and economics uptake would likely increase. With the government’s increasing focus on STEM, humanities and arts are already seeing a fall in pupils. Yet creativity, self-expression and communication are some of the things that increasingly sophisticated algorithms struggle to replicate the most. Empathy, expression and complex culture help define us as a species. The humanities and arts allow a deeper understanding of humanity holistically; the way our world works, expression and the uniqueness of individuals. To me, this variety of both mathematicians and creatives seems infinitely more valuable than every person understanding how incredibly complex equations function. If the entirety of our education system and lives is dedicated to job prospects and the crunching of numbers then education has failed us. Education is there to prepare us for adult life which is far more than maths. A sole focus on the economy and jobs strips life of the joy that it contains.

 Completing GCSE maths taught me not only algebraic fractions but also to despise the subject. It did not click the way analysing passages or learning about the earth’s mechanisms did. And that is fine. I have friends who adore maths and complete equations for fun, that is their choice, and they are going to do amazing maths-related things with their lives. The simple fact that Sunak has failed to grasp is that not everyone enjoys or is a natural at maths. Yet those who are not are often branded as failures or stupid by a system that measures the ability to memorise first and value as a human last. I performed well in my maths GCSE, but am almost certain I would fail if I was forced to continue it at A-level. There is a reason I made the active decision not to take it. I resented sitting in a classroom and trying to learn things I knew I would never apply anywhere in my life. Both enjoying and not enjoying maths are perfectly valid stances. Whilst understanding percentages and basic fractions are things essentially required of life, beyond a certain point learning maths is only valuable if you truly enjoy doing so. For those that do not enjoy it, there are plenty of other crucial skills. Skills that are far less likely to be replaced by the usage of an algorithm. In a 2020 press release the government announced that “the Creative Industries sector is growing more than five times faster than the national economy”. There is value in the arts and creativity, not taking maths does not automatically make you unemployable because so many soft skills are just as important in life. Forcing thousands of unwilling students to learn mathematical concepts that they are both uninterested in and will never use is a waste of time and school resources.

 The government has already demonstrated that it knows not everyone enjoys the rigorous academics of A-levels. Qualifications like the Btech and T-Levels are specifically designed to be more vocational than academic. These qualifications are often equivalent to multiple A-levels and therefore have the workloads to match. If maths were made compulsory until the age of eighteen would something have to be cut out of these curriculums to make room? Or would additional work be placed upon those pupils who specifically selected courses that avoid traditional testing? In 2021, mental health charity young minds reported that one in six children aged five to sixteen were identified as having a probable mental health problem. Many young people are already at breaking point and Sunak is proposing adding pressure.

 With an education system plagued by shortages, stretched budgets and staff and pupils on the brink of crisis, Sunak seems to have entirely the wrong priorities. There are infinitely more valuable reforms that could be implemented to better equip the next generation for their futures. Sunak continues the pattern of caring more about the education system’s performance in league tables than the young people travelling through it. Giving these young people control and choice over their futures is something that is intrinsic to the UK education system. Now the government is wanting to strip this away and I can only hope that they fail.