It would be difficult to find a non-maths teacher who hasn’t frozen at the whiteboard when faced with a simple sum. English teachers like me ache for the ground to swallow us, as we panic in front of carnivorous Year 9s. I have used the phrase “I can’t do maths!” more often than I’d like to admit. As our maths lead practitioner pointed out: “You’d never say ‘I’m no good at reading,’ so why is it OK to celebrate that you’re no good at maths?”

As a female teacher, this couldn’t ring more true; if we don’t model a positive attitude towards maths, how can we expect our girls to? Even in 2018, girls at school still are more comfortable saying “I can’t do maths” than boys in the classroom. Thankfully, in academia there is progress towards improving this imbalance; the Zeeman medal for achievement in mathematics and the Nobel Prize in physics have recently both been presented to a woman for the first time.

While it is staggering that it’s taken until 2018 for this to happen, it does suggest that the chasm between the sexes is slowly closing in the developed world. However, in the developing world traditional gender roles, economic deprivation and lack of school transportation still mean that the field of mathematics, and education in general, is male-dominated. Girls, in particular, need an education in order to escape economic instability, but without money how do they get an education in the first place?

This cycle would have prevented Zimbabwean maths teacher Lucia Punungwe from attending secondary school. In an all too familiar narrative, Lucia’s family was immersed in poverty and survived by labouring in the fields that surrounded her town. As a child, Lucia was often unable to pay her primary school fees in full and was sent back to walk the 12km home in bare feet, and wearing her ragged dress, to collect money that simply wasn’t there.

When she was old enough to attend secondary school, her parents were too poor to send her there. They didn’t have the money for higher fees and transportation to send her to the closest secondary school in Chikomba East. If it was not for a scholarship from The Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), she would have been resigned to the fate that many young girls in the developed world face; a life without education immersed in poverty.

Maths ‘can be life-changing’

Education took Lucia from labourers’ daughter to head girl, and inspired her to empower other young girls. She now teaches mathematics at Kwenda High School, the same school she attended; a positive female role model who helps girls to build key numeracy skills to work their way out of poverty.

“Mathematics is crucial for employment or university, but it is taught by very few female teachers,” she says. “With no role models, girls fear the subject. As a result, they fail it. Failing to proceed with education because of mathematics, especially for young women from poverty-stricken families, means continuing a desperate cycle of poverty.”

Lucia sees mathematics as a way to “secure an independent future” for those she teaches, as, indeed, it did for her. If it were not for her numeracy skills, she would not have been able to train as a teacher in the first place. As a way to fund her course, Lucia used her mathematical skills to start her own business. With her supply teacher salary and agriculture skills, she bought chicks and feed in order to pay her fees at Mutare Teachers’ College. While it isn’t rare for students to have part-time jobs in the UK, starting and running a business during your PGCE to afford tuition fees is a far cry from pulling pints for extra cash.

Lucia now helps other young women to learn how to run a business in her community poultry and gardening project. Here she passes her business skills on to students and helps young women in her community improve their understanding of maths. For the mothers who missed out on education the first time round, she hopes to set up daytime classes whilst their children are at school, in order to develop their numeracy and encourage them to set up businesses of their own.

Even in the UK, with interactive white-boards and access to IT in the classroom, this may seem like a tall order. But in Zimbabwe, Lucia is faced with basic methods that make me feel guilty for getting frustrated when Year 7 can’t remember their computer login details. “We also need to improve technology in our schools,” she says. “I don’t want to see more chalk and red pens. We need touch screens that allow internet access in our schools. Children should have access to laptops.”

Whilst Lucia hopes for technology that we’ve enjoyed for well over a decade, she is also looking for a “reduction of teacher-centred methods” - a shift that we’ve seen in British education, led largely by trends in Scandinavia, for the past few years. On how many training days over the ubiquitous sausage roll and sandwich lunch have we heard the phrase “It all comes around again” from an embittered colleague? Lucia, on the other hand, believes “the teacher must stop being the centre of all knowledge. Students need to be encouraged to research, discover things on their own, think critically and use their discoveries constructively to solve growing problems internationally.”

In this way, the girls of Kwenda school may go on to be the next generation of female prize-winners in the field of mathematics and physics, closing not only the gender gap but also that between the developed and developing the world. Until then, the next time I’m faced with carnivorous Year 9s and a sum on my whiteboard, I’m not going to say, “I can’t do maths.” Instead, I’ll be prepared to fail spectacularly. That way, in a very small way, just like Lucia, I’ll be helping my female pupils to build life-changing skills of their own.

Amy Winston is a teacher and a journalist. 

Tes recently explored the issues facing female mathematicians and the Zeeman Medal. Read more.