UK PM Rishi Sunak sets up panel to identify core maths content for students till 18

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday set up an expert group to identify core maths content that 16 to 18-year-old students in the country need to study. He has been pushing for making some form of maths mandatory for students till 18 years of age. He said the UK was one of the few developed countries where young people did not routinely study some form of maths up to the age of 18.

"They do it in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Finland, Japan, Norway, and America. Why should we accept any less for our children?" he asked. "Of course, we shouldn't. That's why I set out in January we are going to change the way our system works...so that everyone in our country will study some form of maths all the way to 18," Sunak said.  

The UK premiere, however, said he was not saying the answer was A-Level maths for everyone. "But we do need to work out the maths our young people should study," he said, adding that the government would look at what 16 to 18-year-olds around the world were learning and ask the employers what maths skills they need.

"That's why today I am appointing a new expert group who will help us identify the core maths content that our 16 to 18-year-olds need and whether we need a new specific qualification to support that. But to repeat: that will not be A-Level maths for all," Sunak said.

The prime minister said people make jokes about not being able to do maths. "It's socially acceptable. We say things like: "Oh, maths, I can’t do that, it’s not for me" – and everyone laughs. But we'd never make a joke like that about not being able to read. So we've got to change this anti-maths mindset," he said.

The prime minister assured that the government would not bring the change overnight. "We're going to need to recruit and train the maths teachers. We’re going to work out how to harness the technology that we need to support them. And we’ll need to make sure this maths is additional to other subjects – not instead of them," he added.

Sunak listed out his five priorities and said one of them was economic growth. He said his government was going to grow the economy not just over the next two years, but the next twenty. "We simply cannot allow poor numeracy to cost our economy tens of billions a year or to leave people twice as likely to be unemployed as those with competent numeracy," he said.

Underlining why maths was important, Sunak said one can't make movies without maths, one can't make visual effects without vectors and matrices, and one can't design a set without some geometry, and one can’t run a production company without being financially literate. "In healthcare, maths allows you to calculate dosages. In retail, data skills allow you to analyse sales and calculate discounts," he said.

The prime minister said even just basic numeracy skills can increase one's earnings by around £1,600 a year. "Put simply, without a solid foundation in maths, our children risk being left behind shut out of the careers they aspire to; and the lives they want to lead," he said.