It was a depressing juxtaposition. On the day the mind-bending discovery of gravitational waves heralded a new scientific era, British teenagers got yet another ticking off from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for poor maths. The latest study suggests more than 20 per cent of our 15-year-olds are “low performers” in the subject.

Last month the same organisation reported that English schoolchildren have worse numeracy skills than their contemporaries in other countries. In fact, only in Italy and America can you find young people with weaker “basic skills” in maths.

For all the targets, structural reforms, accountability tinkering, curriculum overhauls, stress and hysteria, our long tail of underperformance remains as persistent as ever. 

Not least in cities like Stoke-on-Trent. From former coalfield communities to old seaside resort towns, it is areas that were previously dominated by large, monolithic employment patterns that make up the new frontiers of educational disadvantage. This is certainly the case in The Potteries, where the shift to a world without high employment in steel, coal and ceramics has proved a brutal process.

Poverty, malnutrition, family breakdown  and poor health and wellbeing - disadvantage thrives in such conditions, creating circumstances that even the best school leaders find difficult to overcome. Alas, in Stoke-on-Trent we find ourselves struggling near the bottom of the local authority GCSE league table. We all know that our future prosperity depends, to an increasing extent, on raising skill levels - particularly in core subjects like maths.

‘Strangling’ opportunity

But we have also now come to the realisation that there is no point in expecting any help from this government to improve attainment.

Despite some windy rhetoric on the importance of maths, education secretary Nicky Morgan continues to offer little in the way of new thinking. On school improvement, the bureaucratic, central command - or, in the words of former Tory adviser Steve Hilton, “Soviet” - orthodoxy remains steadfastly in place, strangling opportunities for deeper learning and pedagogical experimentation.  Meanwhile, teaching quality has been undermined by a disastrous approach to recruitment and retention. It is all very well mandating a new mathematics curriculum. But if there is too little time and there are too few teachers to teach it, we will not get very far. According to the National Audit Office, one in five maths lessons is taught by a teacher without a relevant post A-level qualification. And in areas like Stoke-on-Trent, with a weaker labour market pull, shortages are even more severe. 

This is a recipe for entrenching disadvantage - and what makes it even more frustrating is that the government was warned time and time again following Michael Gove’s slapdash School Direct reforms in the coalition era. 

But rather than wait for support from the Department for Education, in Stoke-on-Trent we have decided to launch our own initiative to boost maths skills. Opened this week by Sir Michael Wilshaw, and with strong support from Charlie Stripp, of the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics, the Stoke-on-Trent Mathematics Excellence Partnership is a three-year initiative to transform maths teaching in the city.  

Because for all the hard work of their staff, and the grandiose pronouncements by schools minister Nick Gibb on the Shanghai revolution, the existing networks of Maths Hubs are far too stretched to deliver sustainable change. So in Stoke we have raised £1 million from the city council and the Denise Coates Foundation to attract new talent into the city and reboot the professional development of existing maths teachers.

Our partnership is offering to pay off student loan debt for maths graduates who come to Stoke to train as teachers; fund cover for the CPD of all secondary maths teachers; pay for maths enhancement training for non-graduate maths teachers; and will operate a new programme for maths undergraduates at Keele University to teach and train in Stoke schools. This is a scheme born of impatience with the bureaucratic inertia of regional schools commissioners or, even worse, the foibles of Lord Nash, the schools minister.

Instead, we have brought together public and private - our local schools, SCITTs, education leaders, Keele University, local authority, business and philanthropy - to deliver change for ourselves. And with strategies for leadership development, school-to-school collaboration and profession-led CPD, it will specialise in everything this government has spent the past five years actively dismantling. 

Recruitment struggle

Stoke-on-Trent faces particular issues when it comes to the attraction and retention of high-quality staff, but I think our solution might offer a more general insight into the future. This government is intent on stripping away much of the architecture of the welfare state (particularly in high-poverty areas) and reducing any capacity for local authorities to provide a school improvement function. The best academy chains have filled the breach; but there remain too many under-performing trusts, letting down pupils and teachers. In the years to come, it will be up to enterprising educationalists, civic leaders and local philanthropists to fill the space.

Stoke-on-Trent is happy to blaze a trail. After three years of investment and external audit, I would hope that we have built a new sense of mission, common purpose, professional development and career progression amongst all our maths teachers. Our aim is nothing less than to make Stoke-on-Trent the city in which any ambitious maths graduate wants to begin their classroom experience.

If this is not quite in the same league as two black holes colliding, in English education policy terms it is nonetheless a giant step. And we will let you know how we get on.

Tristram Hunt is a Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central and a former shadow secretary of state for education

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