Experts have welcomed Labour’s plans to roll out “real-world” maths lessons in primary schools, but insisted it must include “full financial education” rather than just “superficial” attempts to make the subject relevant.
Bridget Phillipson, the shadow Education Secretary, unveiled Labour’s plans to “bring maths to life” in her keynote speech at the party’s annual conference on Wednesday.
Primary school children will be taught to manage their household budgets, exchange currencies and rank their favourite football teams under the plans, as part of Labour’s efforts to make maths relevant if it wins the general election.
Ms Phillipson pitched it as Labour’s alternative to the Prime Minister’s flagship “maths to 18” policy, which is focused on sixth-form pupils and will require all students to take maths until they leave school.
Labour’s plans would see primary school pupils given maths lessons on things such as “household budgeting, currency exchange rates when going on holiday, sports league tables and cookery recipes”.
It would also bring elements of financial literacy into maths lessons, such as using bank accounts and Individual Savings Accounts (Isas) to teach children about percentages.
But experts warned that the plans were “not enough” without comprehensive financial literacy lessons for older children, which they said would require a significant boost to the workforce.
Martin Lewis, the founder of Money Saving Expert, said that while he was “pleased” about Labour’s proposals to put more financial numeracy into primary schools, “we must also properly fulfil the resourcing of financial education in senior schools”.
Mr Lewis has long campaigned for a financial education to be fully integrated into the curriculum, and has produced his own textbooks on the subject focused on teaching children about savings, borrowing, tax, pensions and fraud.
“Numeracy isn’t enough, we need full financial education, it needs to be properly resourced with school materials and ongoing teacher training,” he said.
David Thomas, chief executive of the Mathematics Education for Social Mobility and Excellence (MESME) charity and a former policy adviser to the Department for Education, added that the “real-world” element of Labour’s maths plans must be “well targeted and not superficial”.
“We absolutely have a problem with maths and a culture where people are proud to be bad at it. Any commitment to reverse this is much needed and welcome,” he told i.
“The caution that I would give is not falling into the trap of superficial relevance. When you speak to children about their experience of maths, lots of people do end up saying: ‘When am I going to use this?’
“But that starts with them having an experience in secondary school that is not intellectually challenging, where actually teachers try and try and make things relevant or engaging in a way that the children perceive as slightly patronising because what they want is to be pushed.”
Lee Elliot Major, social mobility professor at the University of Exeter, added that while financial literacy was welcome, a large proportion of children are still leaving school without basic maths.
Around a third of students fail to achieve a standard pass, or grade 4, in their maths GCSE each year, with the figure jumping to almost 40 per cent this summer.
Children are required to retake maths and English GCSE until they pass, but most fail again and again. Just 16.4 per cent of students who resat their maths GCSE this year passed.
Professor Major told i: “What we urgently need is to support basic numeracy early in children’s lives so that every child has functional skills by age 16. Our research shows that half of teenagers who fail to get a grade 4 in maths were already judged by teachers to be behind at age 5.
“Those who fail to get grades 4s are twice as likely to end up not in education, employment or training, and twice as likely to be cautioned by police. If you fail to get basic grades at age 16 it damages your life prospects in many ways.”
Labour has insisted that its early-intervention model is an improvement on Rishi Sunak’s plans to make children study maths to 18 by adding on an extra two years of compulsory teaching.
Ms Phillipson said Labour’s rival scheme would “tackle our chronic cultural problem with maths by making sure it’s better taught at 6, never mind 16”.
Mr Sunak has said he will look at “a new offer for Key Stage 3” as part of the Government’s plans to replace A-levels with a brand new qualification, but is yet to provide further detail.
The Prime Minister announced last week that his maths to 18 plans will form one part of a much more ambitious blueprint for overhauling England’s education system with the introduction of the Advanced British Standard.
