Ministers have made maths a priority. They have spent tens of millions of pounds promoting East Asian “mastery” pedagogy, want to make the subject compulsory post-16 and are planning a network of specialist maths schools across the country.
But a Tes investigation has revealed that the subject faces an underlying crisis created by teacher shortages, funding turmoil and constant changes to exams.
And Professor Sir Adrian Smith, the leading academic appointed by ministers to report on the feasibility of making maths compulsory until the age of 18, has disclosed that he regards universal participation as no more than a distant “aspiration”.
Meanwhile, leading mathematicians are warning that Conservative plans to open a specialist maths school “in every major city in England” - announced prior to calling the general election - will be counter-productive and drain scarce expertise in the subject away from mainstream schools.
They believe that, far from strengthening maths, existing government reforms have made it more fragile than ever. And further changes, such as this year’s much more demanding maths GCSE, are expected to make things worse by putting pupils off further study.
‘Winners and losers’
Sue Pope, from the Association of Teachers of Maths, says: “There will be winners and losers this summer [from the GCSE] but the overall impact will be negative in terms of take-up at A level.
“The real crisis will come when they suddenly say in 2019, ‘Where have all the A-level mathematicians gone?’ The whole thing is a nightmare waiting to happen. What’s so frustrating is we can all do the analysis, but why isn’t the Department for Education doing the analysis? Why is it not taking these things seriously?”
One of the biggest barriers to expanding maths education is the shortage of specialist teachers. More than a quarter of people teaching maths in England’s secondaries have no relevant post-A-level qualification, according to the latest DfE statistics.
Recruitment of maths teacher trainees is now at its lowest rate against target for more than eight years, with one in six current training places unfilled.
And the latest monthly Ucas data shows that 1,230 graduates had places to train as maths teachers in April 2017, compared with 1,310 at the same time last year - a drop of 6.5 per cent. Some warn these problems can be masked by schools’ reluctance to admit difficulties.
“Even where a school accepts that a vacancy still exists, they will not advertise repeatedly, since this could tarnish their local profile,” Jennie Golding, immediate past president of the Mathematical Association, says.
“Many secondary schools in England do not have any specialist mathematics teachers and the definition of a specialist used by the DfE is weaker than that used in most other developed countries.”
Post-16 participation
Teacher shortages are among the barriers to compulsory post-16 maths identified by Smith. He was commissioned to report on the goal in March 2016 when the chancellor at the time, George Osborne, used his budget speech to announce that “we are going to look at teaching maths to 18 for all pupils”.
Publication of his findings is six months overdue. But Smith, vice-chancellor of the University of London, is already clear that universal post-16 participation in maths is a long way off.
“In terms of the overall challenge posed to me by the government - that of significantly increasing our national participation in continuing mathematical and quantitative education post-16 - I do not believe we currently have either the pathways or the delivery capacity to move now to compulsory continuation of post-16 study of mathematics,” he told a previously unreported meeting of the Westminster Education Forum last month.
He suggested an “aspiration of moving to something approaching universal participation within a decade”. But this would be possible only if “the package of policy and funding recommendations I have made to ministers could be practically implemented within something like a three- to five-year time period”.
He suggested that these recommendations might include reconsidering the policy of forcing 16- to 18-year-olds who fail to achieve a maths GCSE grade C or 4 to resit. There should also be careers advice on the importance of maths beginning in primary school and school funding models that incentivise maths provision.
Smith wants evidence on how technology can help in the teaching of maths post-16 and an effort to change people’s attitudes towards the subject.
“I believe there is an urgent need to understand better the cultural and other root causes of negative attitudes towards maths,” he says.
“We should put at least the same kind of resources and effort into this as we do, for example, into trying to understand radicalisation of young people.”
Making things worse
But many fear that government plans to address the maths problem may only deepen the crisis further.
Last week, the Conservative election manifesto reaffirmed the party’s ambition to open a specialist maths school “in every major city in England”.
“We do need to do something to develop able mathematicians,” Frank Kelly, chair of the Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education and professor of the mathematics of systems at Cambridge University, says.
“But just shuffling around where the money goes within maths is going to miss the point because it’s the whole ability spectrum and whole age range that need enhanced activities.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, goes further, warning that maths schools will “deplete other schools of great maths teachers and lead to an overall decline in standards”.
Mathematicians say that even initiatives that have succeeded in raising participation in maths could be under threat from funding changes, which means students are increasingly being told they may only study three subjects post-16 rather than four.
Smith has warned that limiting options in this way could hit numbers taking the further maths A level and core maths, a new qualification, which is designed for students who have passed GCSE maths but do not study AS or A-level maths.
Added pressure comes from the new GCSE that thousands of pupils sat for the first time this week. Sixth forms and colleges are bracing themselves for a drop in A-level entries as students feel their grades are relatively weak compared with other subjects.
“The subject is very fragile,” Pope says. “The maths community has been saying this all along with all the changes that are going on - the move to linear exams, the ending of AS as a stepping stone to A level.”
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