Young people who have been turned off maths need to be “unleashed” on “real-life problems” so that they can develop confidence in the subject and learn essential skills, one of Scotland’s leading technology entrepreneurs has said.

Chris van der Kuyl, chairman of video game developer 4J Studios and visiting professor of digital entertainment at Abertay University, said a more innovative approach to maths is key in preparing young people for the world of work.

But he acknowledged that allowing young people to explore real-world maths problems for themselves - such as analysing large sets of data - could be a “nightmare” in schools, because of the requirement to pass exams and reach fixed benchmarks. Colleges are the ideal places to fire up those students who have been turned off the subject, he claimed.

Speaking to TESS after making the comments to a group of maths lecturers and teachers at Glasgow Kelvin College last week, he added: “Further education colleges are a great place to excite people with maths. I believe there is a huge challenge - there are too many people completely turned off by it early and never go near it again. It is about finding ways to build their confidence.”

Mr van der Kuyl, whose company helped to develop the materials-based adventure video game Minecraft, added: “Maths is such a fundamental part of any successful individual’s tool box. Not just in digital industries, but in anything.”

Games such as Minecraft could be one way to help engage young people in maths, but exposing them to real-life maths problems, including highlighting ways to deal with large sets of real data, is also key, he argued.

“Give them a problem they can experiment with,” Mr van der Kuyl said. “Tell them they have to save someone and the only way to do it is maths. Maybe it is about unleashing the young people, rather than teaching them.”

Mining for skills

“There are huge amounts of educational resources [related to Minecraft] out there,” he said, ranging from simple numeracy problems for younger children to complex tasks allowing learners to engineer large structures, using a range of more advanced maths skills.

“I would encourage anyone to play around with it,” he said. “It is classic Curriculum for Excellence.”

Mr van der Kuyl explained that businesses such as the ones he was involved with now required maths skills - even for careers that traditionally would have been more focused on other skill sets. “Marketing, before, would maybe be all about creative applications, but today, analytics are absolutely at the core of everything.

“For the company I work with, the challenge is finding people who have a broad skill set. They understand a bit of human psychology, they understand demographics, but most importantly, they can apply maths tools to a sea of data and start to model and work with what answer could be gleaned from it.”

He added that it was “unbelievable” that statistics did not play a larger part in the maths curriculum.