The education secretary has been asked if the plan for all pupils to study maths to 18 will need more specialist teachers and how her department plans to recruit them, in a letter from a former schools minister.
Chair of the cross-party Commons Education Select Committee, Robin Walker has written to secretary of state Gillian Keegan following an evidence session on the policy last month, where MPs heard sector experts’ concerns over staffing “challenges” that would be faced in delivering the policy.
Mr Walker, who served as schools minister until his resignation last summer, said in the letter that witnesses had told the committee that “more creative ways could be explored to encourage people into teaching maths”.
Niamh Sweeney, deputy general secretary of the NEU teaching union, told the committee that the “maths to 18” policy, announced in January, “did not come with any consultation or discussion with the Department for Education about those workforce challenges”, which Mr Walker said the committee was “disappointed to learn”.
Mr Walker wrote in the letter: “In light of the concerns raised above, would you be able to clarify: a) whether the proposal to extend maths to 18 will require more maths teachers to be recruited, and if so, how the department plans to achieve this; and b) what steps the department is taking, in light of these proposals, to ensure a workforce plan for mathematics is developed?”
In the session last month, the committee was told that schools would “really need maths specialists”, and that meeting this demand would be “key” to delivering the policy.
Ms Sweeney said that one of the “biggest challenges” that school leaders were facing at the moment was getting a qualified maths teacher “in front of any of their students”.
The letter also asked for “clarification” on whether the DfE intends to make maths or numeracy a focus of the reforms.
And it also said that it hopes the department will “consider the opportunities to provide both more financial education and more work-related mathematics content alongside academic and vocational approaches to mathematics”.
“In general, the department should try to communicate a positive message about mathematics and numeracy being subjects in which everyone should aspire to attain and to combat the widespread assumption that it is OK to be bad at maths”, Mr Walker adds later in the letter.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak announced the plan for all pupils to study maths in some form up to the age of 18, earlier this year.
Writing for Tes today, Mr Walker said that raising a generation of young adults to be more proficient at maths “should only be a good thing”.
But added: “The reality is that this reform contains within it multiple possible reforms, and there are a number of entrenched problems that will need addressing, lest we put the cart before the horse.”
The DfE has been approached for comment.
