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But, increasingly, a maths A-level is becoming an important ticket to just about every profession you can think of. The engineers who are designing the London Olympic stadium, the designers behind the next generation of computer-animated games, doctors, scientists and anyone in business, all encounter significant levels of maths and statistics in their work.
And, increasingly, UK employers have to recruit from overseas to find people with the necessary maths skills.
So what can we do to persuade more children to take maths to A-level and beyond? No doubt it would help if they knew more about just how important maths is to getting a good job. That – and the prospect of making money as a result – might motivate some.
However, learning something because it might one day be useful will only take an adolescent so far. Maybe we actually need to help children – and their parents – to enjoy maths, regardless of its practical use.
I know , I know – the words “maths” and “enjoyment” are not natural bedfellows. But that is largely to do with the way it is taught. If we could only expose people to real maths, creative maths, the sort of mathematicians enjoy, then I believe we can inspire a whole new generation of  mathematical talent. |
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Go Forth And Multiply
What is it about maths that sends so many people running from the room in terror? Just last week, a new survey was published that suggested that as many as half of all parents are not confident handling the maths that their children bring home from school.
Perhaps the problem lies with the experience that so many parents had during their own school days. Many adults look back on the maths they studied as difficult, dull and – the ultimate killer – pointless. Why, they might ask, did they spend all those hours studying logarithms when they’ve never needed them since?
With these kind of attitudes, it's not surprising that many children also have a negative view of maths and drop it at the first opportunity (which is at GCSE).
And this, unfortunately, is a huge problem for this country. If there is one thing that universities, employers and Government all seem to agree on, it is that our economy needs more mathematicians.
There are some obvious places where a maths A-level will come in useful – those bankers in the City who have been messing up recently have clearly been getting their numbers wrong. |
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