Last week, the UK government announced plans to have pupils study “some form of maths up to the age of 18”. The plans, prime minister Rishi Sunak has suggested, will give people more confidence in managing their finances - as well as the ability to do their jobs better and get paid more.
However, while there is plenty of evidence to suggest our outcomes in numeracy - and science, technology, engineering and maths more generally - need to improve, I believe that these plans are ill-thought-through and may even have a detrimental effect on education outcomes.
While these proposals are not being considered in Scotland, their announcement as a flagship policy warrants both consideration and indeed concern - and any pressure for Scotland to follow suit should be resisted.
My PhD research (due this year) investigates the internal motivations and external influences upon subject choices. As part of the research, I was fortunate enough to speak to nearly 100 secondary students across four schools who were at various points of their senior phase.
I found key influences over young people’s learning decisions, including those which contribute to the decision of whether or not to stay on at school. These were: enjoyment of a subject, attaining good grades in a subject, and whether or not a subject was needed to gain access to what they wanted to do after school (for example, entry to a college course).
One key driver that led students to dislike a subject, or to drop it from their curriculum at the first available opportunity, was it being mandatory. Some of the secondaries I carried out my research in had made languages mandatory for a period of time, some compelled students to take two science subjects, and another had maths mandatory to the end of S5. In each case, a key finding of my research was that compulsion turned young people off a subject.
Young people did not understand why they were being forced to take a subject they did not enjoy, they were not good at, or that they did not need. Compulsion also, of course, had an impact on the breadth of curriculum. Young people felt that their opportunities were being narrowed as a result of their free subject choice being reduced.
In a few cases, young people were set to leave school because of it. Below are the voices of some of the students I spoke to:
- “I would rather have taken anything else but [compulsory maths]. Honestly, it was a year of complaining to my mum and dad, I wanted to leave” - S5 student.
- “I would take computing over [compulsory] maths. I am now looking at college options for next year” - S5 student.
- “I wanted to take music and drama but, because of the way the columns worked, I couldn’t do that due to the sciences we need to take” - S4 student.
Just as in England, Scotland needs better numeracy outcomes. Tes Scotland previously revealed that 15 per cent of students who entered N5 maths failed, compared to just 4 per cent who took English. Tes Scotland has also revealed that 45 per cent of students feel nervous or anxious about maths and over a third feel more nervous about maths than any other subject (38 per cent). A formal requirement to take this subject can therefore be expected to increase, not decrease, these figures.
My research shows that compulsory subjects can damage a young person’s experience of education, and even narrow their opportunities to pursue their aspirations as a result of an effective narrowing of their curriculum.
I fear that the result in England - should these plans be implemented - will be greater numbers of young people leaving school before they otherwise would have chosen to. Given what we know about the attainment gap, with richer pupils performing better at maths, it is likely poorer pupils will be hit harder.
It’s hard to see how leaving school sooner will improve these students’ lives, or indeed their job prospects. I hope that the prime minister, and anyone in Scotland with similar ideas, takes this ill-thought-out plan back to the chalkboard.
Barry Black is a postgraduate education researcher at the University of Glasgow. He tweets @BarryBlackNE
