June 5, 2008 | posted by Michael Baxter in Education, IABN |

The trouble with the City is this. Sixty per cent of us think it’s the key to our future prosperity, the other 60 per cent say we place far too much emphasis on the sector. Maybe there’s another problem: maths.

Okay, you probably spotted the little slip in the previous paragraph. But according to the think tank Reform :“The UK’s maths economy which powers the financial services sector and wider industry is in danger of atrophy as fewer students study mathematics and attainment falls.”

So that’s atrophy for maths, and why? Maybe we are too keen to hand out a trophy here and a trophy there for our kids.

Reform doesn’t like GCSEs. “At the core of this problem has been the diminution of the O-level/GCSE which has gone from being a key ‘staging post’ to a ‘tick-box test’,” it said. “Scores of less than 20 per cent on the top paper regularly suffice to gain a grade C, despite a much reduced level of difficulty. Many students are turned off by the narrow teaching which results, and this has led to a generation of ‘lost mathematicians’. Individuals lacking mathematical skills stand to lose £136,000 in income over a lifetime, and so have cost an estimated £9 billion to the UK economy since 1990.”

Reform has been busy analysing maths examinations from 1951 to today. “From 1951 to 1970 these were a rigorous test of thought and initiative in algebra, arithmetic and geometry.” It said: “Students were required to think for themselves. By 1980 questions were becoming simpler. Following the introduction of the GCSE there was a sharp drop in difficulty, with questions leading pupils step by step to a solution. Pass marks were lowered throughout the period.”

Actually, Reform is quite right.  Universities often complain about the poor standard of maths from new domestic students, and say overseas students are often quite surprised at how poor our maths is.

In this country it often seems as if it’s more acceptable to be bad at maths. If our arithmetic fails us in public, people laugh and say: “Don’t worry, I was hopeless at maths at school,” and everyone has a good laugh, the unspoken comments, they all share that memory. Even those who were good at the subject can sometimes feel embarrassed by their prowess.

It is not like that in other countries. In France and China, for example, the maths Olympics is big. In the UK, well, have you heard of the maths Olympics?

Reform said: “The global maths economy is driven by high personal capability, initiative and logical thought. The top 5-10 per cent of mathematics graduates in the financial services sector practice ‘power maths’, modelling derivatives and understanding financial risk. These skills are at the pinnacle of the City hierarchy making their practitioners the new ‘Masters of the Universe’.

“Yet the home of Turing, father of modern information technology, and numerous recent prize winners such as Atiyah and Wiles, is failing to generate sufficient quality mathematicians. Financial services are being forced to recruit a high proportion of overseas graduates – as many as seven out of eight of all such posts. UK workplaces are finding themselves short of people with basic mathematics skills. Universities are being asked to select from a significantly reduced pool of applicants, a large number of whom are independently educated or from overseas.”

Reform went on to talk about, “The Gordian knot of political control” and said this has been tightened in an attempt to reverse the misguided trend towards “progressive” teaching. “The unintended consequences of politicisation and centralisation of the subject are demotivation of teachers, a diminution of the enjoyment in mathematics by pupils and an exclusion of universities and employers from education policy. Steps to increase accountability taken by the Government and a focus on examination results have created unhelpful pressures on institutions and exam boards, which have in turn led to declining examination standards.”

It was once said that whoever can untie the Gordian knot, would rule the whole of Asia. Alexander the Great, had that ambition but really didn’t have the time to undo the knot, so he got his sword and cut it.

The current Minister at the Department for Schools, Beverley Hughes, is no Alexander, but she needs to unpick this knot, or else, the city that sits at the centre of our economy will be populated by highly educated mathematicians from abroad.