The government has announced an intention for maths to be taught until the age of 18. Kevin Gilmartin looks at the implications for school and college leaders.

More maths?

Background 

Somebody once compared mathematics with love, remarking that it’s a simple enough concept but inevitably it tends to get complicated. Perhaps this is a good starting point to consider the Prime Minister’s ambition for all young people to study maths until the age of 18, saying that it may “improve employability and the ability to cope with modern life” (tinyurl.com/mt5drzfz). This all sounds simple enough and instinctively many might agree with it as a good idea. However, once we start considering how and why we might want to make this ambition a reality, it starts to get very complicated. 

What is the present situation? 

Currently, maths is the most popular A level, with 90,000 students studying it in schools and colleges. A further 10,000 students take core maths (designed on ‘problem-solving’ content), usually in Year 12. 

Students who don’t achieve a Grade 4 in GCSE maths (about a third of students) must resit it in the sixth form (or take functional skills at Level 1 or 2) in order for the school or college to be able to claim funding. The DfE commissioned a major review into post-16 maths, led by Sir Adrian Smith in 2017 (tinyurl.com/4n6feepe). This called for a rethink of this controversial resit policy and stopped short of recommending that everyone should continue to study maths until the age of 18. The findings were ignored though, and resit students now amount to a further 135,000 students. As fewer than a quarter of these students subsequently achieve the magical Grade 4, it means they continue to resit repeatedly, adding to the numbers who need teaching and seemingly stuck in an endlessly depressing loop. 

Other students take some form of maths as part of their vocational programme or apprenticeship. In total this means that about half of all 16–18 year-olds study some form of maths, but it also it means that about a quarter of a million 16–18 year-olds don’t. This is the scale of the challenge. 

Who are the new target maths students? 

Students who achieved GCSE Grades 4–6 who stop studying maths in the sixth form. Those with GCSE Grades 1–3 study functional skills numeracy or resit the GCSE, and those with Grades 7–9, often take A level maths. So, the first big policy question the government should answer is – to what level should students ‘have’ to study maths? Is it to Level 3 A level standard? Level 2 to 3, that is, AS or core maths standard? Just to Level 2 GCSE resit standard? Or is the standard not important at all, as long as students are doing some form of maths? Or is the level not important, just the age of 18? 

Where are the maths teachers? 

If there is a conceptual vagueness around who the students are and what level they should be studying to, then there is a concrete certainty around the biggest obstacle of all – where are the teachers going to come from? The government has missed its target for recruitment of maths teachers for the last ten years and every school or college leader knows how difficult this feels on the ground. Latest figures (tinyurl.com/58uc9na4) show only 90% success for 2022/23 with 1,844 trainees recruited against a target of 2,040. 

It’s even worse in FE colleges, where the majority of resit maths students end up, taking maths alongside their main programme, often a vocational one. 

Half-hearted solutions to the staffing problem have been tried and have failed in the past, with initiatives such as golden handshakes, bonus payments and creative use of teaching and learning responsibilities (TLRs) for maths teachers. At a time when the profession is taking strike action over general pay and conditions, and one in every eight maths lessons is taught by non-qualified maths teachers, it doesn’t seem like this hurdle is going to be overcome any time soon. 

The way forward 

In the summer of 2022, during the first Conservative leadership campaign, Rishi Sunak called for a “British baccalaureate”, involving compulsory maths and English in the sixth form (tinyurl.com/4b3fnn52). Many feel this is a more workable policy, with maths as a core part of a wider package of art, literature, music and creative subjects, rather than being bolted on to our present narrow curriculum. 

Perhaps this baccalaureate could be allied to a ‘passport-style’ qualification, which ASCL has called for (see www.ascl.org.uk/ForgottenThird), which would replace GCSE maths (and English), taken at various levels from age 14 to 19 when the student is ready. This would end the current cliff-edge of a high-stakes terminal exam and could mean that the government’s call for more students to study some form of maths until 18 has a better chance of becoming a reality.

Kevin Gilmartin
ASCL Post-16 and Colleges Specialist
@ASCL_UK

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