Something Doesn’t Add Up
Another whiffy dead cat dropped on the table
There may be some amongst you who may have raised a quizzical eyebrow and wondered why yesterday, in the midst of the maelstrom of public discontent that is making itself evident through strikes, and the ongoing politically motivated destruction of the NHS, our bonsai Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has decided to announce that he wants all pupils¹ to study maths until 18 years of age.
You would (of course) have to be terribly unpatriotic, and have a heart of purest ice not to be stirred by the Chief Munchkin’s desire to have every teenager who couldn’t wait to finish with the subject dragged back into fresh hell. However, even those involved in mathematics professionally aren’t necessarily welcoming this announcement with open arms.
To be sure there are sound reasons for wanting the populace to be more numerate, but crowbarring another two years into unwilling minds is not going to do the job, and one might say that things like a knowledge of functional applied maths, like basic statistics and probability should be covered far better in the run-up to GCSE. But there are sound reasons why people stop doing maths, and why you’d imagine the maths you get up to the age of 16 should be sufficient for most people. Asking questions about the balance of the maths curriculum to that point might actually be more useful as an exercise than trying to cram another two years of it in. It’s also more puzzling as a thought when you have to ask the killer question: who’s actually going to teach it? As an idea it’s not that well-thought out, seeing as there is already a shortage of skilled teachers in maths and the sciences, and has been for the whole of the last decade. You do have to wonder where all this spare capacity is going to come from. Maybe all those ads running now, asking for part-time teachers in F.E. as a patch-up job is what they’re pinning hopes on to fill gaps, but it’s hardly looking like an attractive offer for anyone considering teaching at any point in a career.
There are certainly valid questions to be asked both about the suitability of the GCSE system, and of the A Level and more general post-16 landscape, which looks increasingly confused and muddy. Questions about the relative narrowness of the 16–18 setup compared to many other developed countries might also be worth asking, when the International Baccalaureate has a wider-ranging offer across disciplines in many countries, and seems to produce well rounded young people at its end point.
You might also wonder whether all of this is also just for kids in the state system, and how strictly many of these particular measures will be applied in the independent sector, if they are at all. My hugely cynical mind thinks this is yet another not very subtle way to funnel the children of the plebs, and the proles towards STEM, to head for trade and be good little worker bees, leaving the higher things for the intellectual titans who are the offspring of the wealthy and privileged². Setting things like the political agenda, or the cultural tone are not, after all, things fit for the lower orders to busy their poor, feeble, underdeveloped minds upon. Best to leave those things to their betters.
But this insistence is the biggest puzzle of all, seeing as Sunak, the man with the air of someone who was second choice in a Lord Farquad pageant, along with a number of his erstwhile and current (and expensively educated) cabinet colleagues, don’t appear to have much of a grasp on mathematics, judging by the economics of the last decade or so. Perhaps it’s not really today’s teenagers that need the top-up maths lessons after all.
¹ Sorry, but no. They are not students until they get to the post-18 level. It’s my little prejudice, but fuck it.
² You know, like the under-regarded songwriting and acting genius Laurence Fox, just to pull a random example out of the air. See? I almost managed to get that out with a straight face. Almost.
