Education Committee 

Oral evidence: Government proposals for compulsory maths to age 18, HC 1059

Tuesday 7 February 2023

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 7 February 2023.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Mr Robin Walker (Chair); Caroline Ansell; Miriam Cates; Mrs Flick Drummond; Anna Firth; Kim Johnson; Ian Mearns.

Questions 1 - 59

Witnesses

I: Sir Martin Taylor, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Mathematical Education, Royal Society; Niamh Sweeney, Deputy General Secretary, National Education Union; Jack Worth, School Workforce Lead, National Foundation for Education Research; Sam Sims, Chief Executive, National Numeracy; and Kevin Gilmartin, Post-16 and College Specialist, Association of School and College Leaders.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Sir Martin Taylor, Niamh Sweeney, Jack Worth, Sam Sims and Kevin Gilmartin.

Q1                Chair: Welcome to today’s session on the Government’s proposals for compulsory maths to the age of 18. We will be hearing evidence from Sir Martin Taylor, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Mathematical Education at the Royal Society, Niamh Sweeney, Deputy General Secretary at the National Education Union, Jack Worth, School Workforce Lead at the National Foundation for Education Research, Sam Sims, Chief Executive of National Numeracy, and Kevin Gilmartin, Post-16 and College Specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders. You are all very welcome.

We will start this session with a bit of an overview of where we are now with maths in schools before moving on to the specific proposals, or the general proposals I should probably say, that have been put forward. I will start by asking each of the panel to give us a brief overview of how maths education in England currently works from primary to secondary and what options exist for those who wish to study maths beyond 16, starting with Sir Martin.

Sir Martin Taylor: I will start with the 16 to 18 because that is the truly critical part. I have about six or seven different pathways to talk about here. The first and pre-eminent one is the A-levels that we have in mathematics. Then we have the fairly recent T-levels in technical subjects, which have quite a lot of maths embedded in them. There is core mathematics, of which I hope we will speak quite a lot more because that is very important but very underdeveloped in my view and very promising. Then there is functional skills, typically for those who did not quite make it in GCSE and it is their 16 to 18 pathway. Then of course some people go on to BTECs and we have some people, who again I hope we will talk about, who are doing GCSE resits again and again.

Chair: The tone in which you say “again and again” implies you don’t think that is necessarily a good idea.

Sir Martin Taylor: I am just giving you a heads-up, Chairman.

Q2                Chair: Thank you. Does anyone want to add on the current picture and, Niamh, perhaps talk about the existing pathway up to 16 as well?

Niamh Sweeney: Yes. I think we recognise that A-level maths is popular, it really is popular, but we have a situation where a third of young people do not hit a grade 4 in GCSE maths. There are lots of considerations for their options afterwards but we have to consider why that is and why they do not get there. There is a real alienation and disengagement for a large number of children and young people about maths and that starts much earlier than GCSE. It is about their relationship with their teacher, and I think it is important that we talk about the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Even in primary we are seeing schools struggle to recruit and retain teachers and that has a huge impact on children who have difficulty grasping or enjoying maths if they do not have a good relationship with their teacher.

At key stage 2 there is a huge focus on high-stakes assessment in the SATs. There is a huge amount of pressure on teachers to teach to that test and I know that some of you were brave enough—I don’t know if I would have been—to do the SATs in the summer. It was excellent to see the young people standing over you, checking their time and making sure that you did that, but there is a huge amount of pressure and children talk about anxiety around maths at that point. There is pressure to teach to the test and focus is put on low-ability children to focus on passing, on hitting that attainment. They are much more likely than their higher-ability peers to say that they do not enjoy maths or find it fun. I think for an 11 year-old to say that they do not find part of their school day fun is very disappointing.

Priority is given to learning procedures, how to get the answer right rather than how to achieve it. At key stage 3 our research and our members report that a child’s capacity for action, curiosity and creativity in maths has often been reduced. Assumptions are made about their level of understanding because they have achieved a high-stakes test. If you want to talk about GCSE reforms and the concentration on certain subjects, English and maths, having higher stakes in school league tables, the emphasis on a small number of subjects means that creative subjects are harder hit. It might be that a student who is failing to hit that 3, 4 borderline target is removed from geography, history or drama to do more maths. Having somebody who is struggling with maths just doing more maths does not necessarily make them enjoy it.

We have a real issue with GCSE resits. My personal experience of teaching post-16 education is that it is very important that students have a fundamental understanding of numeracy, particularly going into vocational qualifications, not general applied BTECs and T-levels. Simply sitting a test again and again, maybe with a different exam board, with a new teacher practising mock tests, is not the way to do it if you have struggled for seven years to hit that target.

I think the bigger question is what are we talking about here. Are we talking about giving young people access to broader curriculum choices at 16 that include numeracy, that help them go on into the workplace? If that is the case, the teaching of numeracy at post-16 is not necessarily where we would put the emphasis. We would look at the other end.

Q3                Chair: Sir Martin mentioned the core maths and presumably there is an opportunity to scale that up to make it more relevant for the people who might not have been able to get an academic maths qualification at an earlier stage.

Niamh Sweeney: Functional skills maths is a good way to go. I have taught that and when it is integrated into a vocational or applied qualification it works well for young people who have struggled with a traditional academic maths curriculum. That is much more important, but if you want children to enjoy maths and problem solving and everything that goes with that, to have numeracy and literacy, it is investment in early years education. We know that the attainment gap before children get to school is the thing that we find most difficult to close down.

Q4                Chair: Sir Martin, do you want to come back?

Sir Martin Taylor: Very quickly, basically to agree with what Niamh said but I hope maybe further in these proceedings we will talk a little bit more about GCSE and what it is for.

Chair: I was going to come to that next, so don’t worry.

Sir Martin Taylor: There is a good third of the population for whom it is not really fit for purpose and we have to think of something like core level but for 14 to 16 year-olds. We need something else.

Q5                Chair: I will come back to the point about GCSE reform, but let me bring in Kevin.

Kevin Gilmartin: I won’t add to the qualifications that we have talked about that we know are in the system, but I will add two points.

The first is what do young people, the children themselves, think is going on with maths in schools. I suggest that they think there are two things throughout the whole period from the age of four upwards. It is GCSE with this cliff-edge accountability that is drummed into them by their teachers because of the high-stakes accountability that will come with that and their parents and where that magical grade 4 can lead them. There is GCSE maths, which is very daunting and frightening to a lot of them, and then they might think, “I might do A-level maths because I am really good at maths”. I suggest that is the perception for most young people in schools and that is what they think maths is.

What there is not in the system at the moment is anything that will give the young person what we advocate for at ASCL, a passport-style certificate of competence in numeracy. We think that could go some way to solving a lot of the problems that exist with this cliff-edge accountability. If we could decide that we want young people to be competent in and able to achieve the basic tasks in numeracy, they could do that at any stage and we would not end up with a system where after 12 years of teaching, we are telling young people, “You can’t do it, you have failed and you leave with effectively nothing”.

Q6                Chair: But wouldn’t that create a different cliff edge? If you have a certificate of competence, presumably some people will not be able to get it.

Kevin Gilmartin: I think that it depends on the content. One would hope that most young people would be able to get that because you could take it at different stages. You could work with the groups who don’t have it. It would not be a high-stakes accountability system. It would be part of a broader education. We think it is worth looking at. We also advocate it for literacy but that is a whole different topic, I am sure.

That is not there and also not being discussed yet is a broader maybe 14 to 19 diploma or baccalaureate, maybe a 16 to 19 baccalaureate, of which we feel quite strongly that maths or numeracy or a combination of both could well play a significant part up to the age of 18. Those are the two points that I make as my opening.

Q7                Chair: Sam, can I bring you in?

Sam Sims: I will pick up on the point that Kevin and Martin have made about the different types of GCSE or the different options there. Why they might be different is that our current GCSE is primarily norm-referenced. That means, of course, that a significant proportion of young people have to fail by design because they are compared to their peers.

Coming back to Niamh’s point, which I absolutely agree with, on where this starts from, we are grouping and assessing very young. That means that young people are experiencing failure from 11 and then typically when we look at the results of GCSE we see a very strong correlation between outcomes and that curve at 11 compared to 16. There is very little deviation from that. Essentially in some ways we are ensuring that young people who are failing at 11 are almost certain to fail at 16.

The alternative would be something that addresses that, that is criterion-referenced, that is like a driving test, something that you can pass, everybody could pass. The huge benefit that that might offer is the ability for young people to emerge from education confident with the maths that they learn, confident to be able to apply that maths and with a positive attitude towards maths.

Going back to the point about where we should start and looking at younger age children, we see that confidence is often knocked at a very young age. I speak to many adults who have very low numeracy and almost without exception they tell me that they had a very negative experience at school from a young age. They can often even remember the experience that started to knock their confidence and experience maths anxiety. In the system when we go right back even to the early years and then into key stage 2, we need to think about how we support young people to build that confidence, create a positive attitude and see the value.

Touching briefly on GCSE, Niamh Sweeney made the point that a significant proportion of young people at 16 fail their GCSE. They get lower than a 4. That is by design of the qualification itself. As Kevin said, after many years of schooling, those young people will emerge typically with very low confidence. They have closed the door to maths is what I hear consistently. It is very unlikely or very difficult to open that door again for very understandable reasons. Depending on the year, we are talking about 135,000, 150,000, 175,000 young people at 16 who have to fail their GCSE and that creates some significant damage when we are trying to re-engage.

It also has an additional effect—we talk about wanting to build understanding, we want young people to be able to use the maths that they learn in their everyday lives to solve problems, to put it to good use—I think the way in which we test and examine prevents that because when we look at, for example, the GCSE maths higher paper, we see a less than 25% pass rate required. That does not show that you need to demonstrate a good knowledge or understanding of maths to pass the exam. It creates, exactly as Niamh said, teaching to the test and it does not create young people with the confidence and the skills to be able use maths in everyday life.

Jack Worth: Colleagues have focused a lot on those who are below grade 4 at GCSE and then go on, and that is an important group to think about, but on this central question of the ambition for lots more children and young people to do maths to 18, that group is already studying towards GCSE resits or doing functional skills. We can talk about the appropriateness of those for these students, but on the central question it is the group that is above the GCSE threshold, the grade 4, grade 5, grade 6, who typically in large numbers are not progressing with maths until 18 whereas a high proportion of those with higher grades tend to go on to do A-level maths or core maths. The big barrier to everyone doing maths is thinking about the very large group in the middle.

Q8                Chair: I guess the question is do you see value in that group being encouraged to do more maths and in what form?

Jack Worth: I think that there could be value. Lots of economic research shows a return to maths qualifications in the labour market, so higher earnings among those who take maths qualifications. High grades in maths GCSE and maths A-level are associated with higher earnings.

Q9                Chair: It doesn’t necessarily correlate. If those people who are “good at maths” and currently get high grades in maths GCSE go on to higher-earning jobs, that is because they are good at maths rather than because of the qualification itself. It does not necessarily correlate that if you make more people take that qualification more people will get higher-earning jobs, does it?

Jack Worth: No, indeed. Selection by ability into different qualifications is an important thing to take account of and is very difficult to take into account of in this analysis, but the best analyses tend to find that even taking an additional qualification seems to be associated with increased earnings.

Q10            Mrs Drummond: Following on from that, isn’t it the case that a lot of university degrees such as geography, economics and so on demand A-level maths and quite often people don’t know that until it is too late because they have not done maths A-level?

Jack Worth: Yes, absolutely. It is not just about earnings. We should not just focus on earnings. It is about employment prospects and the skills necessary to do later study and to do those jobs. In the changing labour market, there are opportunities from things like automation and analytical skills are increasing in need.

Q11            Chair: In 2015 and 2017, the Government reformed GCSE and A-level maths. The objective was to improve people’s understanding and was also in response to feedback from employers who did not feel that the previous qualifications were doing the job. How well has that succeeded?

Sir Martin Taylor: If I start with the reforms that you have just specified, the first one is A-level and the fact that the content is now fully prescribed. I used to teach at the University of Manchester and I was aware that the students in front of me knew all sorts of different things but the common intersection was rather small. That was a real problem and that has been corrected and I applaud that.

The second thing is that GCSE now has a greater emphasis on problem solving. Going back to Cockcroft, we have always thought that is very important. I hope in time we will be thinking about what happens in other countries but I can tell you that the Singapore model is based very largely on problem solving. I applaud that but I do not applaud everything. I want to stress that before that we had various reforms on rigour and in particular the abolition of people doing modular examinations and now they have a big high-stakes set of exams at the end. I don’t think that is very good and not very good for the well-being of the students, to be honest.

Q12            Chair: Thank you. Any further views on that? Niamh, you have already mentioned some of the concerns about GCSEs. Do you want to expand on that?

Niamh Sweeney: Yes. I think that it is important to recognise the norm-referencing of the grade, the idea that a certain number of children have to fail. For us sitting in this room—I don’t accept it, I think it is wrong—we recognise that that is the system they are working in, but I don’t think young people or their parents do. I think that when young people are studying maths at GCSE, when they are trying their hardest and revising, they think they have a fair chance. They think if they work hard and keep going and do something that they find difficult, they just might be able to do it, and the system is stacked against them. It is the unfairness and the unjustness of that. As a post-16 teacher, students would come to me who knew they were borderline 3,4 and they worked really hard and then had to go back and do it again. They find it soul destroying.

Looking at the teaching of mathematics, we should be avoiding the emphasis on one subject being important over all others. If we look at the purpose of education, about what a GCSE is for, it is the next step to go on to further education or into the workplace or thinking about higher education. There is consensus now in the profession and in other agencies that we should be looking at a more integrated qualification system. There is the Royal Society, the Edge Foundation, the Times Education Commission, the Big Education Trust and the New Era Commission on Education. You cannot just tinker, you cannot just look at one subject and make a headline-winning statement. You have to look at all of it in the round and have a holistic approach.

Kevin Gilmartin: One of the associated issues with the reforms and the fact that they have led to such a higher accountability system, particularly with GCSE maths, is that it might lead, and it does lead, to school leaders making choices about different types of groups and what sorts of students will not only take what qualification but also what sorts of students will be exposed to, for want of a better word, the better maths teachers. Particularly where there is a shortage of maths teachers, where one in eight classes is not staffed by a qualified maths specialist, you have to think about the decisions that will impact some young people where schools might fear, “Well, a third are not going to pass this GCSE, so which kids do we put into that group?” In effect, sadly, they will not get the opportunity. It is not nice.

Q13            Chair: To play devil’s advocate on that for a moment, if there is high accountability on the 3, 4 borderline, doesn’t that incentivise heads to put their best maths teachers on the pupils who are struggling?

Kevin Gilmartin: Yes, it could, so what are the consequences of that? It could mean that some of the other students who might have benefited from being pushed in their maths may not get that and for the ones down the bottom—there are all kinds of incentives and you have quite rightly picked up on one of them, perverse incentives. It is a shame that the reforms of GCSE maths and A-level maths were not separated somehow from the high-stakes accountability, because we have not seen if they could have worked better.

Jack Worth: I will come back on norm-referencing. It has been a part of the system for a long time, but alongside the 2016 reforms of GCSE was the introduction of Ofqual’s national reference tests, which NFER delivers on behalf of Ofqual. It is a sample test of 15 and 16 year-olds in England. They take an English and a maths assessment and that enables standards in maths to be tracked over time in a systematic way, which can inform the grading process. There is flex within the system based on that and other evidence to allow deviation from the norm-referencing, but there have been very stable grade boundaries ever since norm-referencing.

Q14            Chair: Over time does that reflect the stability overall of the levels of achievement with norm-referencing?

Jack Worth: There was a slight increase in maths standards in the years preceding the pandemic and there has been a drop more recently, so it is at a similar level to where it was in 2017. It enables tracking year after year of the maths attainment of those people at a consistent level.

Sam Sims: To come in on the reforms—and if I may come back to the qualification point and earnings—of course these reforms were very thoughtfully put together and offer many advantages. Some of the downside, the negative outcomes as a result particularly of having stronger focus on exams and on tiering of GCSEs, is we have seen a significant increase in teaching to the test. That favours memorisation and it does not build self-efficacy. It starts to hinder the positive attitudes that we all need to be able to use the maths that we learn. It also means, as I have mentioned around the grade boundaries and the tiering of GCSEs, that the system can in effect be manipulated. Schools, teachers, young people are under enormous pressure. If you need to get only 22% in a higher paper to get a pass, that leaves it vulnerable to only learning so much to get that 22%.

It also shows that GCSE maths at the higher level is too difficult. It is not a well-designed exam. You should not have an exam where to pass you need 22%. Why that is so important is because it reinforces a fixed mindset. Even many of the people who are going to pass GCSE maths will get a very low mark. Even those getting a 4 might have to get less than half—significantly lower marks. If you go into an exam where you do not have the understanding to be able to even attempt some of the questions, that reinforces a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset. It reinforces the experience of failure and the negative attitudes that pervade society and culture in the UK, which is a prevalence of, “I just can’t do maths, it is not for me”. While understandable, it is incredibly deeply-seated and we need to address that. Some of these reforms have created that challenge.

I will return very briefly to the point on earnings and productivity and qualifications. While I think that qualifications do not always necessarily relate to earnings, although GCSE maths is a gateway into many professions, when you look at the international research on numeracy in particular—adult numeracy rather than GCSE maths because GCSE maths does not mean adult numeracy—the fact that we have half the population with the numeracy level of a primary school child shows that GCSE maths does not mean that you are numerate, that you are confident and skilled enough to use that in everyday life. When we look at studies of adult numeracy across the world, we see that numeracy is closely linked to productivity and has a strong relationship with earnings as well. We have a good body of research to support that.

Q15            Anna Firth: I have a quick question about the problem of GCSE maths resits. I was talking to a teacher before this session who asked why are children who do not get their grade 4 not automatically switched to functional maths and rather than having to keep doing something they are failing at, switched to something that perhaps they will succeed at. That is question 1. I will ask both questions at the same time.

Question 2 comes from when I was going around a college that does fantastic T-levels yesterday for the start of apprenticeship week. One of the problems with selling the T-levels is the grade 4 maths that is needed. They have to keep doing that to keep on that course. The same question applies there: could functional maths unlock more T-level courses? Is it high enough to underpin the vocational courses, which are A-level equivalent?

Sorry, there is a rather lot there but I am very interested to hear your answers.

Kevin Gilmartin: I will come in on the first part. Within the system for resits, if they have got a grade 3 it is a requirement of the system, a condition of funding, that they must continue to do the GCSE. Grades 1 and 2 students could well do functional skills. There are actual conditions of funding requirements on that.

Q16            Anna Firth: The question is: is that sensible? Should that be changed?

Kevin Gilmartin: We probably think that it should be changed, yes.

Sam Sims: I agree with Kevin on that point. It should be changed because when we look at 2022, just last year, we see 17-plus resit pass rates of maths at 20.1%. That is a staggeringly low proportion. When we look at the statistics over a longer period we see that every time a young person resits between 16 and 18 they have a statistically lower chance of succeeding, of getting that pass. It had the very best of intentions as a policy and I can absolutely see where it came from. I speak to adults day in, day out, who have taken their GCSE seven or eight times, have stuck with it and I hugely applaud them for doing that. National Numeracy supports adults to do that, but that puts off many people. Imagine if you failed at 16 and you have had that experience from 11, remember.

The other thing to mention on functional skills is that it is an alternative, but I hesitate there simply because many teachers tell me that it can be harder for young people to pass functional skills than get a GCSE 4. Again, functional skills was intended to be very functional but it is not that functional in its final iteration. It also includes lots of elements that are not particularly functional maths. It is a good option, an alternative and it works for some people, particularly post-19, but I think we need a viable alternative that is not necessarily functional skills.

Q17            Anna Firth: Thank you. Does anyone else have an input?

Niamh Sweeney: I have worked with young people who have failed their GCSE six or seven times, I have been trying to teach them a vocational general applied course at the same time and it is really difficult. Part of it is that the maths is not seen as connected to the subject that they are studying. Where functional skills works well is when it is integrated into the qualification that they are taking, whether they are taking a whole BTEC, three A-level equivalents or a mixture of those subjects. Sometimes the difficulty that I have with T-levels is that that is the binary option of you are doing one subject and then the maths is standalone next to it.

We have not quite thought of what the foundation year into T-levels will be, what are the funding arrangements for colleges that are giving students the equivalent of a three-year post-16 experience. The students that I have worked with previously who have had a three-year sixth form experience or post-16 experience have flourished and have done better. We have to think about this a little bit. What are our students, young people doing post-16 and should maths be integrated into that? Absolutely.

Thinking of early years qualifications, healthcare qualifications, the T-level in health sciences is very scientific-based as opposed to some of the more practical skills that students will need going into higher education or the workplace. A huge barrier to entry to T-levels is the maths but it is also the work experience and based on where you live. Geography places a huge barrier to young people accessing a different type of education. We find that the students who would be doing three A-levels in engineering, maths, science are just doing the T-level and it is not opening choices for other young people.

Q18            Chair: We are looking at that as part of our careers inquiry. Some of the barriers to people gaining work experience is part of that. Martin, I know you want to come in but I will add a question to that. You were talking about the relevance of maths and I think that is important. For young people it is hard to engage; it seems academic and abstract. Could providing more financial education content be part of making it more relevant to people?

Niamh Sweeney: Absolutely, but it has to be integrated into what a student is studying. You ca not just have a dropdown “let’s invite a bank in to talk about financial literacy”. It has to be integrated into that and that means you need to invest in CPD for teachers, because teaching an integrated subject is also difficult. One of the questions that you should all ask a young person who is a 3, 4 borderline is how many maths teachers have they had, have they built up a relationship with their maths teacher? It then becomes very difficult and they see it as something that is external. An integrated, holistic approach to the subject is a much better way to go.

Sir Martin Taylor: I will be very quick and I will deal with the two questions as asked.

On GCSE and what happens to people if they don’t get their grade 4, they get grade 3 and then typically they get doomed to this cycle of doing resits again and again. As we have heard, only about one in four ever gets there. I am more of a fan of functional skills than maybe others, but I recognise room for refreshing the curriculum in that. If it could move a little bit more into quantitative skills and be useful to people in their lives and they see that, that would help. But to try to properly answer your question, I would be looking at grades 1, 2 and 3 as doing functional skills but slightly refreshed. That was the first thing that you asked.

The second thing was about the relationship between functional skills maths and what that might do for people for T-levels. You are doing functional skills typically 16 through to 18 and you are doing your T-level 16 through to 18, so one will not really interrelate with the other. If you look at the curriculum for functional skills on the one hand, the general mathematical competencies required for the great plethora of T-levels are rather distinct, I am afraid. I do not see much room for manoeuvre on that one.

Anna Firth: Interesting. Thank you.

Q19            Chair: Does anyone have anything to add? No. A final question from me: if you were, any of the panel, made Education Secretary tomorrow, how would you balance between encouraging maths post-16 and looking at reforming what goes on up to the age of 16? If you had a certain number of eggs to put in one basket or the other, where do you think the balance lies?

Sir Martin Taylor: I would look at the 14 to 16 because so many people lose out and get discouraged and get switched off. There is an awful lot more we could do for the 16 to 18s, but for me that is pre-eminent.

Niamh Sweeney: I think that real change takes real vision and it needs targeted resources and time. We absolutely need to look at an integrated, holistic qualification system for post-primary education. We need to look at the toxic testing in primary education. If we want to tackle adult numeracy, which I think is where the announcement came from, if we want to have literate and numerate adults in the workplace, supporting early years education in early mathematics and early numeracy is absolutely the way to go. You support parents with their children with numeracy. You might have a parent who has had a bad school experience with maths but you can overcome that with good early years provision in numeracy.

Chair: Good point. Thank you.

Kevin Gilmartin: I would love to take away the high-stakes, cliff-edge accountability that young people experience by bringing in the criterion reference, passport or certificate, to be taken 13, 14, 15 and then allow maths to be integrated through a broader baccalaureate or other types of qualifications like T-levels through to the age of 18.

Sam Sims: I agree with a lot that has been said already. When we look at the early years and we see the relationship between the development of spatial awareness and the correlation between GCSE maths and up, you see that not just the skills that we learn but the confidence and attitudes that we have towards numbers and maths develop from a very young age. I am very drawn towards that. We have to start somewhere and I think that Niamh’s point is a very convincing one. We know that we can support young people between 16 and 18 and 19-plus, adults as well, to build their confidence and attitudes. The benefit there, looking at those areas, is the influence that adults have working with children as well as their own lives in their work or managing their money, that you touched on.

Our work at National Numeracy focuses much more on the adults and what can change and how we support that change. There is a convincing relationship between how we break the intergenerational cycle of negative attitudes and we create and build confidence. That can be passed on to the young people who are supported by adults, so we need to think about adults, parents, carers, teachers, all of those people.

Jack Worth: Given the severe recruitment and retention challenges that we face at the moment, I would be very reluctant to embark on major reform of qualifications with the knock-on impact for teacher workloads and the impact that might have on retention, but more on what is the focus of grade 3 for further study, but also looking at the options available to those on grades 4, 5, 6 would be a good focus.

Q20            Ian Mearns: A couple of quick supplementaries to what we have been talking about. Are we seeing any sort of perverse concentration on the 3, 4 borderline cases in schools at the expense of other students? Do we have any robust data on the proportion of youngsters who take resits? Niamh Sweeney mentioned some youngsters taking resits on numerous occasions, but what is the success rate of the youngsters who take resits?

Sir Martin Taylor: The resit success is one in four, as I said. That is taking it many times, so it gives you an idea of how dismal it is.

Q21            Ian Mearns: Even after five resits, it is one in four?

Sir Martin Taylor: I am afraid that is the stark truth, yes.

Q22            Ian Mearns: Of course there have been some questions about the validity of GCSE grades anyway. Ofqual has talked about marks being accurate at one grade. When we are talking about high stakes for youngsters, that is a big variation. Of course, some of the youngsters who are marked at a higher level might be lower in actual fact and some who are marked at a lower level might be higher. It works both ways.

Niamh Sweeney: The first time you take your GCSE maths you are marked against your peers. If you take it in the November as a resit you are marked against your peers and some others. If you take it in the summer, you are not marked against your peers. You are marked against the students who are taking it that year. Each year you do it, it becomes a little bit more difficult because you are taking it with year 11s who are being taught in year 11 doing maths and you are doing it one hour a week with the eighth teacher you have had. You are trying to concentrate on your post-16 studies and you are being alienated because you have failed it four times already. It becomes a vicious cycle and we absolutely need to think about that.

Q23            Ian Mearns: Is anyone concerned about the concentration on 4, 3 borderline students?

Niamh Sweeney: I think it is a reality but one of the biggest challenges that leaders have at the moment is getting a qualified maths teacher in front of any of their students. If you talk to people teaching maths, it is because the majority of people teaching maths are geography teachers or science teachers or PE teachers, not just teaching a couple of hours of maths alongside their timetable of their core subject but vast numbers of their subject. That is very difficult to do because it takes a huge amount of commitment and preparation to do that. They are doing their best but it is really difficult.

Q24            Ian Mearns: I am trying to be kind here but just because you are a PE teacher does not mean to say you cannot teach maths.

Niamh Sweeney: I have taught out of my subject and it is difficult to maintain high standards.

Ian Mearns: But it is all okay because we have loads of PE teachers?

Niamh Sweeney: I don’t think we do any more.

Sir Martin Taylor: I will just say a word on the confidence of these people. Your PE teacher, poor chap, has to teach a subject he does not really know and he is not very confident. Think what that does to the children. They absorb his lack of confidence. There is an anxiety that comes from him.

Ian Mearns: It might be a “her”.

Sir Martin Taylor: I thought you said he might get a hernia. Yes, it could just as well be a her, quite so.

Q25            Miriam Cates: Sam, this one is for you. How do British children perform in assessments, SATs, GCSEs, compared to other comparable countries?

Sam Sims: I am probably not best placed to answer that question.

Jack Worth: We participate in a number of international studies that measure maths standards. The TIMSS study looks at year 5 attainment and year 9 attainment and we are above the average for that and have been for quite a few years in some of those. PISA is the big one at age 15, where in the most recent round in 2018 we were above the OECD average for performance. The most recent study on adult numeracy was the PIAAC study, which was carried out in England in 2012. Once the additional set of countries was added in 2016, we were at about the average but also there was an upwards grading in age, so the younger cohort had relatively low numeracy attainment relative to other countries in the OECD.

Miriam Cates: That is very interesting.

Sam Sims: On the point of the PIAAC data that Jack referred to from 2012, it showed that 56% of adults in the UK have a numeracy level expected of an 11 year-old.

Q26            Miriam Cates: How does that compare? That is really important but it is also very important how that compares to other countries. You are saying that it is about average compared to OECD whereas our academic scores pre-school are slightly higher than average. That is interesting.

Coming back to the idea of confidence and intergenerational cycle, I absolutely recognise that as a former science teacher. You even hear primary school teachers say to children, “My maths isn’t any good”. I hear my colleagues in Parliament—not in this room—say every day, “My maths isn’t any good. I can’t do percentages; I can’t do ratios”. We heard through covid politicians and officials presenting press conferences where they made quite basic errors about what is a rate or a percentage increase. I wonder how much of this is down to confidence from a very early age. Linked to that, do you think we start formal education too young and therefore many children’s experience is to start with failure? That certainly seems to be the case with literacy. Is it the case with numeracy?

Sam Sims: To your first point about teachers I want to touch on low confidence and maths anxiety, which I think is greater than we typically acknowledge. A big study that came out last year looked at the peer effect of having low confidence or maths anxiety among adults working with children and children among themselves. Of a sample of around 4,000 trainee teachers, across any setting, across any subject—primary and secondary and not just maths teachers—we see that 43% either have low confidence or low skills or both. It is very understandable when we look at the culture and the system they have been through. We also see that 31% of those 4,000, when they were asked how they feel about maths and they were given a set choice of words, chose a negative word. The words are nervous, anxious, worried, confused, panic, stupid, defeated, terrified or sick. That is approaching a third of a sample of 4,000 trainee teachers.

We have to acknowledge that this is an issue that we need to address. There are completely understandable reasons for how this emerges but we need to think about how we address this. If as educators we are not confident or we have maths anxiety—again, perfectly understandable—we need to be conscious of the effect that that can have on the young people who we are supporting.

Miriam Cates: It kind of says to young people, “It is okay to be bad at maths and it is okay to write yourself off and you will never need it again”.

Sir Martin Taylor: I want to build on some statistics and then I want to say something about the cultural appreciation of maths, which is another part of the answer to your question.

We had some research at the Royal Society and according to that 40% of students doing mathematics typically feel they lacked confidence in maths at some point, 20% feel that they lacked confidence and were anxious most of the time and there is 10% who just hate mathematics. The curious thing is that we had this done by gender division. The numbers were just the same but the reasons are very different. There is something very interesting going on there.

I am afraid I fear that part of your question is cultural. I used to live in France and people revered mathematics in France because it was seen as the gateway for success. They would be talking all the time about which exam their children were going to be taking and how they were boning up on things. It was very positive. In England I have never ever heard people discuss mathematics in a positive way at a dinner party. I have never met someone who has said, “I have never read Jane Austen”. They would not want to admit to that but they are ever so happy to say, “I hate mathematics, I never liked it”. I don’t know how you alter this cultural thing but it is there in the background. That is in the Smith report, which I imagine we shall be coming to in due course.

Jack Worth: I will come back with a slight counterpoint. You introduced the point about international comparisons. The PISA study is every three years and the last time maths was a major focus was in 2012, so this is data from back in 2012. The survey responses from pupils were that there was a reasonably low level of enjoyment of or interest in maths but it was at similar levels to the OECD. This is not a peculiarly British problem of not having a widespread enjoyment of or interest in maths. There were lower levels of anxiety about learning maths and quite high levels of perseverance and confidence in learning maths. There are some positives in the attitudes of 15 year-olds towards learning maths back then.

On Martin’s point about recognising the importance of maths, there was what the OECD call the instrumental motivation, the “I will need this for later study” or “this will be important for my career”. Those kinds of agreements from pupils were higher than the OECD average. I think there is a recognition by a high proportion of pupils that maths is a bit hard, sometimes it is not interesting or enjoyable, but it is important.

Sam Sims: From Professor Margaret Brown’s research in 2015, I believe, that the biggest reason given why young people did not take maths post-16 was because it was too hard. They experienced that and I think this ties into my point that if you have an exam that is not accessible to you, you experience that. That is why I say we need to balance it.

Q27            Miriam Cates: That brings me on to my next question. Is it possible to achieve all three of confidence, functional numeracy for the vast majority of children and the opportunity for excellence and further study under one course? Would we not be better off with a transition at 14 so that everybody who has flair in maths and enjoys the academic can pursue calculus but those for whom that clearly is not going to be their speciality get proper rigorous functional maths training where they understand what an interest rate is, they can calculate how much wallpaper they need for their home, that kind of thing. Would it not be better to have a foundation there so everybody could get a qualification but you could also stretch the branches?

Niamh Sweeney: That is a huge question and I want to come back to your last question as well.

There is broad understanding on this side of the table and elsewhere that the cut-off at GCSE is outdated. Now that the majority of young people stay in education and training up until 19, the mandatory cut-off point at GCSE is not working. That takes a brave step back and a commitment to look at what a world-class education system looks like. A world-class education system needs world-class infrastructure.

Your last question was do we start formal education too early. Yes, we do and we suck the joy out of education too early and we put children sitting at desks with pencils and test them too early. We take out the play and the practical nature of education and we lose experiment, enthusiasm and confidence. That spills over up through the primary curriculum through SATs and it spills into GCSE. You have students getting to GCSE science who have not carried out an experiment. Those children go on to do science or mathematics at post-16 and they don’t have the knowledge. They have passed a test but they have not retained the knowledge or skill to achieve things. It all stems from what is the purpose and an investment in our early years curriculum, absolutely.

I want to touch on teacher confidence. We absolutely over-scrutinise and observe everything that a teacher does and if you are not feeling confident in teaching your subject, the high-testing, high-stakes environment that teachers and head teachers work in is having an impact on teacher confidence in that way too.

Miriam Cates: But that is not specifically related to maths.

Niamh Sweeney: No, not at all.

Kevin Gilmartin: I will come in and give a slightly easier answer to your question. I think our association borders on saying yes to what you suggested, a separation around the age of 14 or 15 between functional numeracy, whether it is interest rates or measurement or basic quantities, at that age in some sort of passport-style certificate and criterion reference so that most young people can aim towards passing that. Then allow the joy of maths or the ability to study further maths to go on.

I was the principal of a sixth form college for a large number of years. My record was unfortunately seven times that one of our poor lads had to retake GCSE while he was in the sixth form. It sort of dominated every result season. We had literally maybe 1,000 A-level results come in and we were all dominated by looking towards poor John, I will call him. As it happens, he did okay because he is a fantastic artist, really creative and we spoke to the university. The university gave him a verbal test about his own numeracy skills and said, “Your skills are fine for what we want”. He is now a really successful interior designer.

Sam Sims: I agree with Kevin and say that we have some things to help us here. National Numeracy published a paper that we called “Essentials of Numeracy at 14”, the functional maths skills you would need to develop at the age of 14 in a passport-style GCSE as Kevin mentioned. More recently, just last year, the Mathematics Education Innovation charity produced a fantastic position paper that sets out not just what this should include but how it would work and integrate within the system, which I am really supportive of. It could be a better form of assessment that would offer a much better way to assess. It could offer a much better opportunity for young people to develop mastery. It could also help improve confidence and attitudes as well, particularly if there is a criterion-referenced exam. It would be from 14 or higher. It did not necessarily have to be at 14 but it could be used through the system beyond 14, exactly as you said.

The most important thing here is that it must have currency. One of the big challenges here is about currency, making sure that the qualification that we are talking about is recognised by employers, is robust, is something that a young person can be proud to have acquired. We have to think about that, otherwise it will be seen as in some way inferior and that is not a good way to introduce this.

Sir Martin Taylor: The first thing is an item of information that has just been passed to me. There is a report from Sheffield Hallam University in which they record the fact that PISA has noted that the high performing jurisdictions do not start formal education until the age of seven.

Miriam Cates: Wow.

Sir Martin Taylor: Yes, wow. That is huge, isn’t it? That is the first thing. The second thing is to agree with what you were saying about the divide at 14 but for me that fits rather well with what I said earlier, and others have said too. There is a GCSE sort of route, and that would fit perhaps something like two-thirds—we won’t argue about the numbers—and then in addition to that I wouldn’t call it functional skills but something that is a bit like core maths but it is suitable at that level and has had employer involvement that is set for vocation and the students would feel a lot more motivated about it. This is the lost third, the demotivated third that we are talking to.

Q28            Miriam Cates: But the point is if we are saying that every child needs to have a maths qualification of some sort to progress, it needs to be at least possible on paper that every child can get that.

Sir Martin Taylor: Yes, I agree.

Q29            Miriam Cates: I am supposed to ask about maths hubs, so I got a bit sidetracked. Sam, how effective have maths hubs been in providing support for maths teaching in England?

Sam Sims: Again, I am sorry, I am probably not best placed to answer on maths hubs.

Q30            Chair: You mentioned mastery and the teaching for mastery approach. That seems to be something that works to bring up particularly some of the children with lower confidence in many cases. Have you looked at any evidence on that?

Sam Sims: When you look at international comparisons and you see countries that adopt a mastery approach very early, you can see how successful they have been. In this country for the past decade we have been developing and investing in that. Yes, absolutely. For me, what is very important here, the big advantage is about ensuring that everyone can succeed, that everyone can build their confidence, that nobody is written off too young and it takes account of the fact that we all learn at different speeds. When I speak to adults who have struggled at school from a young age, it is very common for me to hear, “I could do it, I was just a bit slower and I got left behind”. I hear that consistently and I think the mastery approach goes some way to addressing that.

Sir Martin Taylor: I was recently on a government panel for hubs, so I have a little bit to say. The first is how much teachers seem to appreciate the work of the hubs. It helps them further their knowledge and give them some confidence. They are working quite well is what I heard, but there were two main defects. They were both communications issues. What the hubs were doing was not getting down to the teachers terribly well because they would typically communicate to the head, the head had a lot on and they were not passing it down to the teachers, who would like to have known about it. Therefore, the flow in that direction is not always terrific and the heads, of course, are always a little bit loth to let people go sometimes because that means they have to arrange cover. There is a bit of a snag there.

In the other direction, hubs were originally designed so that they would take account of the local needs, the needs of the teachers, and then feed that back, and that flow is not really working at all. It is pretty good on the whole but two things need to be rectified.

Niamh Sweeney: I am not an expert in hubs but I can find out some more information. However, we do need to look at teacher CPD. We know that in England in particular they have much less access to CPD that other OECD countries, and getting out of the classroom to access this information and hubs and sharing information across schools is difficult, particularly post-pandemic. We need to think about what it is we need to develop our teachers’ practice, particularly in maths but in all subjects.

Q31            Anna Firth: There is agreement that there has been a deterioration in numeracy in this country. Certainly the National Numeracy report shows a 13% uptick in literacy, from 44% to 57%, but a corresponding drop of 4% in numeracy, from 26% to 22%, over an eight-year period. At the same time we know that the UK is one of the few countries not to teach maths to everyone until the age of 18. Do you accept that there has been this clear deterioration in numeracy and that we need to put this right? Do you think that 16 to 18 is part of the solution? Who wants to kick off?

Sam Sims: I would be happy to say a bit on this. One thing to say immediately upfront is that the underlying data that you are referring to is quite old. The most recent data that we have on adult numeracy levels is from 2012—the PIAAC data that Jack mentioned, plus the Government Skills for Life data from 2021—and we saw that drop from 2003 to 2012.

At National Numeracy we have subsequently conducted a number of surveys and research that shows that if anything that has gone down further since 2012. There is nothing to give us any indication that that adult numeracy level has changed, and we know that half of all adults have low numeracy. We need to look at how we are addressing this and we do need to look at the education system as well as looking at adults as well.

The crucial thing here is that when we are looking at both the PIAAC and Skills for Life surveys, they are surveys that test numeracy confidence and skills being applied to everyday situations. This is the way in which we all need to be able to use numbers and maths. Whatever our job and whatever we are doing, every single job requires numeracy to some extent. Therefore, we do see this disconnect between GCSE and GCSE outcomes and adult numeracy levels. Something is not happening well here.

Some of this is in the way that we have covered already around the systematic challenges in the school system—those that emerge with very low confidence, for example, our strong focus on examination. It does create a culture where 45% of adults would not be ashamed to say that they are terrible at maths to somebody else. When you look at how that compares to other areas, like literacy, it is significantly higher. Therefore, we do need to look at those underlying attitudes.

Q32            Anna Firth: You have quite rightly highlighted the problem in adults. Do you think that the Multiply programme—which is very new, only launched last year—is having an impact and do you think that that is part of the solution?

Sam Sims: It is too early to tell if it is having an impact. We have not reached the end of the first year yet. There are some underlying challenges with the Multiply programme; however, there is some great work happening across the country. To make such a strong commitment to developing adult numeracy, focused on numeracy for those adults without a level 2 qualification explicitly, which does not duplicate or replicate funding from any other area, is a massive step in the right direction.

We are already seeing some innovation at the local level. I would like that to be much deeper innovation, much faster innovation, and the big challenge that we are yet to see addressed with Multiply is whether it is effective at engaging those adults with very low confidence, very low skills, who have low numeracy, to get them started. They need a gateway. They need to open the door back up to numbers and maths. The proof is going to be in whether that happens.

Kevin Gilmartin: The second part of your question was around being one of the few countries that do not teach maths until 18. That is absolutely true. We are also one of the very few countries that teach such a narrow curriculum to the age of 18. If we are going to teach maths to more young people to the age of 18, unless we get more hours into the system—yes, please, we will take that and we would like the funding to go with that. Unless we do that, there is displacement of other qualifications in teaching. That is the issue when we have a very narrow, traditional, three A-level-type curriculum.

Q33            Anna Firth: What do you say about the International Baccalaureate programme, which does require every student to study maths, but there are three different types of maths—maths studies, basic maths and higher maths, and the maths studies is much more applied and more functional? I do not know if I am using those terms correctly technically, but could that be part of the solution?

Kevin Gilmartin: I had the pleasure of introducing the International Baccalaureate to the college where I was principal. It was fantastic for a smallish group of students who wanted that type of experience. I am pleased that that qualification has been exempt from the reforms ongoing with T-level. That is a very positive thing. It has its place but it is not going to be for all young people.

Q34            Anna Firth: The principle of having lower-level maths that is much more functional and much more applied, is that not a good principle for teaching to 18?

Niamh Sweeney: Having a holistic curriculum from 11 to 18 or 19 is where we would like to go. Maths absolutely has a key point in that. I have taught the IB and it works very well. It also gives young people continued access to arts and literature and languages; you can start a new language. It is a holistic approach and that is what we are saying. Our curriculum becomes extremely narrowed very, very quickly. You have young people taking a three-year GCSE programme. By the time they come to me, when I taught them at post-16, they might not have studied history since they were in year 8 or year 9. They might have failed their GCSE maths. We have narrowed our curriculum, we teach to the test, we are sucking the joy and excitement out of education and we have a high-stakes accountability system. Yes, absolutely, a more holistic approach earlier is very much the way to go.

Sir Martin Taylor: A little bit about the IB—I used to receive students who had done it and there was a bit of a problem that their knowledge was somewhat thinner or narrower than it was if they had done A-levels. However, I would question them after their first term and they had all caught up. That was because they had a broader knowledge. They were very capable at studying, it seemed to me. If you ever set IB against A-level, that is an important point to bear in mind.

The other thing is that Kevin was making a point that I consider absolutely cardinal in what we are trying to talk about today. That is that if we are going to do maths through to 18, there are two models. Model A is keeping the A-level system. However, then you have to ask how you do your maths through to 18. We are certainly not going to get everyone to do an A-level in mathematics. Therefore, you will probably end up with something like they all have to do three and a half A-levels and we will call that core mathematics or something like that.

That could be viable but we have just had a glimpse of what you might call the international Rolls-Royce model, the baccalaureate, where you can do your maths but at the same time you can learn a foreign language, you can do arts and creativity things and you can do different sciences. That futureproofs the students because they have a broad base of knowledge. They are probably going to change career three or four times in their lifetime. What they need is that basis.

Q35            Anna Firth: Thank you. I am conscious that we are straying into areas that other people are going to ask about so I am not going to ask any more questions. I am going to let Jack finish, but question 7 I will not be asking because I am taking up too much time. However, Jack, I would still love your answers to the questions I asked.

Jack Worth: Going back to your original question about the deterioration in maths attainment, a lot of the international studies do not support that. There has been over the last 20 years in a number of different studies an increase, whether it is numeracy skills or maths skills, in those assessments and compared to the international averages. I think that there has been an increase.

In terms of the PIAAC data on adult numeracy and the differences between different cohorts, younger cohorts tend to have lower skill levels than older cohorts in that study. That does not necessarily mean that they will always have lower skill levels. When we looked at the literacy part of the PIAAC and compared it to a previous literacy study, the same was the case in terms of low literacy among the younger cohort. When that cohort were a bit older, in the PIAAC study, and had entered the labour market, their literacy skills had increased. There may be the same in numeracy in that when young people enter the labour market they pick up these skills through that rather than through their qualifications. There will be another PIAAC study published next year with a bit more information.

Anna Firth: Thank you. If there is any time to talk about the financial possible benefit, I will come back to that.

Q36            Kim Johnson: We know that the Prime Minister made his announcement for the study of some form of maths up to the age of 18, in January. I would like to ask all of you individually whether you support it, if so why you do and if not why not? Can you keep it as brief as possible if that is possible?

Sam Sims: Overall I support the announcement by the Prime Minister, with some important aspects to that. Looking at Sir Adrian Smith’s review of post-16 maths in 2017, there is a lot to go on and a lot of evidence to draw on. We know that a post-16 focus on maths could have a significant advantage for labour market skills and returns for individuals in terms of jobs and wages—we see from a number of studies that this is likely to be the case—a potential impact on increased productivity and longer-term economic benefits as well.

However, there is a but. The thing here is that without addressing negative attitudes towards maths we are going to struggle. When we saw the announcement, even if you look at the reaction for the press or in social media, you see, “That’s the worst thing I could imagine, having to do maths until I was 18”. That reaction says something about how we perceive and our attitudes towards maths and numeracy. We cannot expect that to be addressed overnight. We have to do something about it and it must start much younger.

It has to be about the maths we need in everyday life. It has to be about building understanding, making it useful and making it relatable to people. Otherwise I fear that it will not be successful. It must also help young people build confidence at the same time. We have talked about how people can have a negative experience and it can knock their confidence, which can last a lifetime. We have to do this in a way that builds confidence and those positive attitudes and addresses some of those negative perceptions. Therefore, I am in favour if we can do those things and that does require us to look beyond the 16 to 18.

Kim Johnson: Kevin, yes or no, and maybe not repeat what Sam said?

Kevin Gilmartin: I will be quicker, I promise. I broadly support the concept of more young people doing more maths and numeracy to the age of 18 but it can only be achieved within a changed system. The shame about where we are at the moment is that the first reaction from a lot of the teaching profession is going to be, unfortunately, to roll the eyes, because we do not have enough teachers at the moment to teach the compulsory and the mandatory maths that we have at the moment. It is a worthy ambition but we need to come from a slightly different starting point.

Niamh Sweeney: Yes, as part of an integrated qualification system that does not put a one-sided emphasis on a single subject. It was an unfortunate announcement that did not come with any consultation or discussion with the Department for Education about those workforce challenges and about the challenges of the system that we are in at the moment. You need to think about more than just saying things like “world class”, “world beating” and “gold standard” and put in some world class infrastructure to support that.

Sir Martin Taylor: I will try to be brief. The Royal Society has supported maths through to 18 for about the last 10 years, and, yes, we do still support it. We recognise that there is a need for fundamental reform. In particular, you have to ask yourself—a thing that Rishi Sunak did not mention—what you are going to teach the students. This is important. Hopefully we get to other countries, but there is a great move at the moment to teach not just mathematics, but mathematics and quantitative skills. That means computational thinking in your mathematics, using data skills, things like that.

Chair: Which the French are very strong on, are they not?

Sir Martin Taylor: Yes, in my old country, they are indeed very strong on that. It is also what employers are asking us for.

Jack Worth: I will echo the rest of the panel. I am supportive for all the reasons in terms of economic returns and the economic growth arguments and it is beneficial for pupils themselves. However, the challenges are great. The key one is the teacher supply, teacher recruitment and retention. We are not recruiting and retaining the maths specialist teachers that we would need to do this at the moment, because the core group that we are talking about in terms of expanding maths provision have completed level 2 qualifications. Therefore, we are talking about something in level 3 where you need maths specialists to do it. Enough schools are struggling along with specialists across maths at the moment.

There are also wider challenges and wider difficulties in implementing this as well. If you look at core maths and the experience of that, it is a complex set of incentives for schools, what the marketing and opportunities are for pupils but also the teaching capacity required to deliver it.

Chair: Can I bring in Caroline quickly?

Q37            Caroline Ansell: A number of the panel have raised recruitment and retention. One of the primary challenges that I have had from those in my constituency is where are these maths teachers to come from. My understanding is that the Department met its recruitment targets, 90% in 2021-22. You might like to say something on that.

Ian Mearns: What was it rounded from in the previous year? They only knocked 700 off it, you know.

Caroline Ansell: My question to Niamh is around that notion that you talked about, a more holistic curriculum and more integrated-type qualifications. Is there a case for looking at our maths teaching workforce and with some of those are very highly qualified mathematicians who come into the profession, perhaps dedicating their time to those higher-reach qualifications? Is there room for a more general approach? What is going to be the solution if recruitment and retention is already a problem?

We have all recognised that we want to extend. There was consensus on the panel that we want to extend that opportunity around numeracy and function skills to 18 and clearly there is a deficit here and we need to be very creative around how we breach it. What are the number of silver bullets, or perhaps some lateral thinking, around the recruitment and retention and teaching of numeracy?

Jack Worth: It is very challenging to recruit and retain maths teachers. The implication of that is that we have a lot of non-specialist teachers teaching maths; 12% of hours of maths lessons are taught by teachers without a degree.

Q38            Caroline Ansell: Is there a strong evidence base that that significantly impacts pupils’ outcomes?

Jack Worth: Yes. It is strong enough internationally in terms of having a fluid knowledge, a deep subject knowledge, so that your teaching can be fluid and adaptive to misconceptions. It is so important to have that deep subject knowledge. Of course, specialism can be measured in lots of different ways. It is not necessarily about having a degree in the subject, but having a degree or a teaching training qualification in that subject makes a big difference. As I said, 12% of current maths hours are taught by people without a relevant post-A-level qualification in maths. If the expansion in teaching capacity was made to this, it would inevitably lead to more non-specialism without an increase in the recruitment and retention of maths specialists.

Q39            Caroline Ansell: Do we hold to that notion that we need graduate mathematicians? Because one of the challenges here is that it is a wider competitive field. If you have a degree in mathematics, you have very many options, which is why we want to raise numeracy. How do we think more creatively and more laterally? You suggested that to teach numeracy at every level, you did not need a maths degree. I see that Niamh has something that she would like to say on this, closely followed by Martin.

Niamh Sweeney: There are several things that I want to say. The Government have missed their target on recruiting new maths teachers every year for the last 11 years, and the Government have cut that target for new maths teachers by 39% since 2019. The total numbers recruited to initial teacher training in maths is the lowest that it has been since 2010-11.

The question you need to ask maths graduates is, “Why do you not find teaching attractive?” There are several answers to that. I spoke to a maths graduate recently. He is working in hospitality doing catering, he is living with his parents, he is thinking about what he wants to do with the rest of his life. I said that there are huge vacancies for maths teachers. His response was, “No way, mate”. That is not because he is not passionate about his subject, but he knows that it is not a flexible career, he knows that it comes with lots of other different caveats, that he can expand his experience, he can work from home and he can travel in all sorts of other areas.

You also then have the double impact that you are not recruiting teachers, industry experts, from industry back into teaching because there is low pay and excessive workload culture. That is a huge issue. It is not competitive. What we do not need or want is maths graduates coming, teaching for two years and then leaving. We need them to stay in the profession. All of that is really important.

Also, our maths curriculum has not changed over the last number of years. Young people who are excellent mathematicians who go on to be experts in quantitative discussion and debate and experimental maths are not drawn to our curriculum to go back and teach what they were taught at school. We have to look at why we are not attracting maths graduates and why we are not attracting all sorts of people into the teaching profession.

Caroline Ansell: The same would apply.

Chair: We have slightly jumped ahead here, Caroline. I thought that you were coming in with a supplementary question on Kim’s question but this is a slightly different line of questioning.

Caroline Ansell: I was asking about recruitment and retention, which comes later, because I will need to make an early exit for Treasury questions.

Chair: That was not quite indicated. Can we bring in Sir Martin on this and come back to Kim? That would be fair.

Sir Martin Taylor: I agree completely with the analysis that sat behind your question. That is the first thing. I have something to say on both recruitment and retention. On recruitment, if we do get into this happy situation of maths through to 18, we are going to have an adult population that is a lot more numerate and a lot more at ease in mathematics and we should hope to be able to recruit more teachers, so there is sunshine at the end of the tunnel but you do need more teachers here and now.

I have to say that the of ideas that I am examining at the moment—I have been talking to some people—I cannot give any names—near the Treasury and they seem quite happy with some of these ideas—one would be to improve the packages for recruitment and the second thing is pay differentials for subjects that are in great need such as maths.

Caroline Ansell: We have already had that. I had a golden hello 20 or 30 years ago as a modern linguist.

Sir Martin Taylor: You need something that stays golden after the hello, that is the point.

Caroline Ansell: Understood, but I fear I will be in great trouble with my colleagues, so I should defer.

Sir Martin Taylor: Can I say something very quick on retention? We have some research by Sheffield Hallam University that found that when it comes to recruitment, it is a little bit bimodal. Some schools lose a lot; some do not. The characteristics of those that retain their students are that they are very well mentored, there is a no-blame culture, they work in groups as teachers and they get their full share of CPD. If you look after your teachers you can keep them but lots of schools do not do that.

Chair: We will come back to those topics.

Q40            Kim Johnson: Because of time I will reduce my questions down to one. Niamh, you mentioned that the Prime Minister failed to consult with a range of people—teacher unions and professionals. Has there been any update since then? Has he had any discussions since the announcement?

Kevin Gilmartin: No. We are very disappointed that the announcement was made. For example, with core maths, I sat on the board and represented ASCL on the development of core maths and that sort of approach can only be to the benefit of the profession. We were very disappointed with that.

Niamh Sweeney: No. I meet with the Department for Education and officials and Ministers regularly. We have a programme of talks where we are talking about the working lives of teachers, recruitment and retention, excessive workload and what we can do to combat those things. I have to say that maths is a shortage subject. A golden hello and differential pay would not make that much of a difference. We have seen it before and it just pushes the teacher shortage crisis elsewhere.

We know that the biggest thing about recruitment and retention of teachers is disadvantage—schools that are not funded adequately, that have a high turnover staff; it makes it very difficult to stay there. We are talking about all of these things; maths and the teaching of maths was not one of them.

Q41            Kim Johnson: Would you agree that the Secretary for Education needs to have those conversations with unions, particularly now in terms of this major crisis?

Niamh Sweeney: Absolutely. It has to be about the profession. That announcement of—my goodness, we are in the biggest crisis of education that is happening at the moment. The education disadvantage gap is growing among children. We have more children living in poverty and the announcement came about teaching more maths. It was not what the profession expected or needed.

Q42            Kim Johnson: You did mention in your opening remark that a third of pupils failed to gain a grade 4 in maths.

Niamh Sweeney: If you a student from a lower socioeconomic group, if you are a black student, a student with a special educational need or disability, you are more disadvantaged by that GCSE system.

Chair: Thank you. Flick, you have been waiting patiently.

Q43            Mrs Drummond: Rolling everything up, I think that we are all agreed that maths should be carried on to 18. What should it look like? Should it be still going down the same route but make sure that everybody does it, or should it be completely changed into a longer curriculum? What is your vision of what it should look like?

Sir Martin Taylor: The thing that I would advocate change for the most would be what is taught. When you look around the world, many different countries are thinking what it is that students are going to need for their future. There is a lot of commonality there and it points towards teaching not just maths as we know it, with calculus and things like that, as have been mentioned, but computational thinking, students who are capable of formulating a problem, solving it on a computer, having a visual presentation of it, these 21st-century skills coming in, and then data analysis. We have had so many people asking us about getting data analysis taught to the prospective workers. Seven out of 10 employers say that they want maths skills and a lot of those want some data skills. Therefore, I would be concentrating on what you teach them. Structures are important too.

Q44            Mrs Drummond: All the way through from the beginning?

Sir Martin Taylor: In California they start to teach data skills to people pre-school. You should be doing it all the way up. It should not be a surprise that suddenly at 16 you hear the word “data” and you start to learn about it. It is in primary to some extent now, but core maths at the top that we have spoken about does that very, very well indeed. The catch is that core maths has not caught on yet. Only 2% of the population who are capable of doing it are doing it. That is a real problem. What is especially needed here is that the universities step up to the plate and say, “We recognise the value of core skills” and send some positive signals.

Niamh Sweeney: It is important that we think about what was announced and what that actually meant. When the Prime Minister made the announcement of maths up to 18, lots of the media and lots of people thought, “A-level, because that’s what I know”. The vast majority of young people post-16 do not study A-levels. They study a mixture of general applied or A-levels and other qualifications, T-levels being part of that.

What concerns me the most about an announcement like that, not least that it has not come from the Department for Education with serious talk about curriculum and development, is that it focuses on one thing and everybody rushes to that one thing and we forget what else might be going on in education. What is the purpose of our general education at either 11, 14, 16 or 19? Are we churning out people who can pass a test or are we supporting young people to develop life skills to go on to the next stage of their lives?

We cannot underestimate that school and college and education cannot do everything. If employers want data analysis, we can provide children with the skillset and the questioning and the ability to do that, but employers have to take some responsibility for continuous training and real apprenticeships moving forward. We have to think about whether it is maths or numeracy and do you just solve the problems that we might have with a competitive, growing economy by bolting on maths for everybody or do we take a brave step and look at our curriculum and ask is it fit for purpose. Is it what children need, is it what children want and is it what we want as a wider society?

Q45            Mrs Drummond: I have just given you the space to say exactly what you would like, particularly in maths. You know my views—we should have a 14 to 18 curriculum and so on—but this is your space to tell us exactly what you want to see with the maths curriculum.

Niamh Sweeney: For me, when I have taught an integrated maths curriculum, I get buy-in from the young people. They see the relevance. You are teaching them about nutrition, using statistics and figures and numbers, or you are teaching them about population change or you are teaching them about transport links and their own finances, about budgeting for phone bills and for university. All those things are important, but just sticking it in an hour a week as a bolt-on to what they are doing now is not the way to get buy-in from young people where it actually sticks and becomes part of their culture and stops this intergenerational feeling about maths. Young people have to feel that what they are learning will take them on to the next steps of what they want to do. We narrow that curriculum too early with too many young people. Absolutely a holistic approach to education, less testing and more skill-based, “You have the knowledge, how do you do it?”

Kevin Gilmartin: If you take literacy, what we do at the moment is we split it. We have English and then you have literature or you have A-level English language. We do not do it with maths. Why do we not do it with maths? Because there is still this confusion over what is numeracy and what is mathematics and basic core competencies. That is what we feel should be addressed. That is probably the most important. Maths is a fantastic subject for so many young people who find it exciting and challenging. If you speak to a lot of maths teachers and students who have done maths, they will say that it is not the same thing as numeracy and everybody should stop confusing it.

The other point that I would make is around the 90% of hitting the target for teacher recruitment cannot be seen as a positive thing. It should be 100% every year. Ninety per cent of around 2,000, basic maths tells me that it is around 200 not recruited and 200 last year and so on and so on. We will not move towards this ambition of splitting the two and then being able to address what we teach them until we get that teacher situation sorted.

Q46            Chair: When you say splitting the two, are you saying that fundamentally there are some people who should be taking a numeracy qualification and some people who should be taking maths?

Kevin Gilmartin: No, I am not saying that. What I am saying is that everybody should be taking the basic numeracy passports or basic competence. Also, many other subjects do teach numeracy already. It is a bit of a fallacy to say that everybody stops learning maths just because they are not doing an A-level in maths. In psychology, in business studies, in economics, in sociology, in statistics, a great many subjects do allow further development of maths teaching to the age of 18 already.

Q47            Mrs Drummond: I think that you mentioned a modular system earlier, so that you could at least have a piece of paper to say that you have reached a certain proficiency.

Kevin Gilmartin: Yes, I would not necessarily call that modular. I would say a basic competence, a basic passport-style, “We’ve achieved something” and it is criterion referenced.

Sam Sims: I would be one of those people advocating for a focus on numeracy. When we look at what numeracy is, it is developing both the confidence and the skills to be able to use maths in everyday situations, in everyday lives, whether that is in our jobs, whatever our job, managing our money, making it go as far as possible, making good decisions, or supporting the children in our care.

When I think about what is needed between 16 and 18, there is an incredible opportunity that what we do there is about building confidence and skills for our everyday lives. We have a good opportunity with core maths, which is already there and focuses on applying maths, data skills and statistics in real-life scenarios, with a strong emphasis on problem-solving. There is a get opportunity here and something that we could boost and would make a big difference here but it also has to be building confidence as well as skills. The way to do that is to make it numeracy. It is about how we use this and ensuring that people know that.

We know, for example, that when we survey people only 20% of people say that a police officer needs any form of numeracy, for example. I would be able to give you hundreds of examples of how a police officer uses numeracy from the start of their day to the end of their day. We have the challenge that we are using numeracy all the time but because we have a perception around what maths is and the fear that we often associate with maths, for understandable reasons, we have a low confidence and we are not even acknowledging when we are using it. A numeracy-based qualification between 16 and 18, a curriculum that focuses on building skills and confidence, like core maths, would be a good step in the right direction.

Q48            Mrs Drummond: You would still advocate keeping GCSE maths and everyone has to pass, if you are just talking about 16 to 18?

Sam Sims: I would also advocate an earlier form of essential maths that could be taken at an earlier age and you would progress on to core maths.

Jack Worth: Core maths fills that gap in the curriculum in terms of it being more applied. Why more people are not choosing to take that qualification is more structural to do with the incentives that schools have to offer it and to staff it and to take it, and also students’ incentives in terms of their next steps. Is core maths going to be on university offers, is it recognised by universities? It is only half an A-level or half an A-level equivalent. A range of curriculum options is there for students post-16, all the way from functional skills up to further maths A-level, all the way through core maths, but in terms of how it integrates with the system, it is not being selected.

Q49            Mrs Drummond: Some of you are advocating the same system of GCSEs up to 16 and then 16 to 18 and others from 11 to 18. Do we have some consensus here, like an IB? Are you interested in the IB or the British version of it?

Niamh Sweeney: This comes to the actual point, the maths versus numeracy thing. Just sticking on an announcement about maths sends the rest of the system into a bit of chaos. We have seen that with T-levels, a bolt-on—just, “Let’s change that”—without looking at the A-level system. I will say it again, the majority of young people post-16 do not do the traditional three A-levels, they do a combination of A-levels and general applied qualifications and it is the flexibility that allows young people to maybe do applied science, psychology A-level and something else alongside it that is welcome. We think that there needs to be a holistic approach to education, a qualification system that does not cut off at 16, that labels a third of people failures, that does not narrow the choices of young people going forward as to if they do not get that 4 they cannot do a T-level and they cannot do an A-level and what else are they left with. If you remove those general applied qualifications, what else are they left with?

I know it is a scary thing for educators to think about, and workload is hugely significant at the moment, but our education system is not working for too many young people and we have to seriously think about what our assessment system looks like, what our qualification system looks like and what our learning experiences for young people look like.

Sir Martin Taylor: The last part of the question invited us to think big, if I understood it correctly. If I try to think big, I would be inclined to say that if everyone is being educated through to 18, what is the role of an examination at 16? What you have been hearing is that we are trying to fudge around the systems we have because we are afraid that they will not change it. However, as our president says, now is the time for radical change, and radical change would remove that. However, you need a lot of formative assessment along these routes. The one thing about GCSE is that it tells students where they are and they have to know where they are by the time they are 16 or so. With the IB on top, that is my big dream.

Mrs Drummond: It is my dream too, Sir Martin, so thank you for that.

Sir Martin Taylor: I thought you might have asked for that.

Chair: I will come back to Ian on the retention piece as well.

Q50            Ian Mearns: Recruitment and retention: I hope I am not being pedantic here but, Jack, you said that we are not recruiting enough at the moment. It has been a long moment. Niamh mentioned 11 years that the Government have not hit their own recruitment targets for initial teacher training for maths teachers. It is similar in other subjects as well. It is worse in some other subjects—physics, design and technology and others.

The one thing that about this that strikes me is that if you undershoot your recruitment targets, that would imply to me that what you would do in response to that in order to meet the challenges of the whole system is that you would increase the target. However, the Government have reduced the target from 2,800 to 2040, and then 90% of the 2040 target but only 65% of the 2,800 target. That has been going on year after year after year. That implies to me that when the Prime Minister made this announcement, he had not done the maths.

Jack Worth: In terms of workforce planning that had gone into that announcement, none of it had been published. As you say, the target reduced between 2019 and recently by 39%. It is a lot lower. The context of that is even more puzzling because the Government used to publish the modelling behind that workforce planning, the teacher supply model, and in the intervening period has reformed that model and it is now the teacher workforce model. One of the implications of that new form of modelling was to take account of previous under-recruitment. The physics target has more than doubled because we have previously failed to hit physics targets, so it is extra puzzling why the maths target has been reduced so much, given that, as you say, we have failed to recruit enough maths teachers over the last 10 years.

Ian Mearns: It is how it looks, Jack. The point is that if you can say that we have hit 90% of target, that sounds much better than 65% of target.

Jack Worth: It does. It tells us two things. The current model does not take account of delivering any increased ambition for maths teachers. It is also a mystery as to why the target has been reduced. We would encourage Ministers to publish that model so that we could see underneath in terms of the calculations that were made to make that target. The last published model suggested that the maths target was likely to be around 3,000 per year for the next decade and now we are at a target of 2,000 and it is a mystery as to why.

Q51            Ian Mearns: Do not forget the 2040 as well. Jack, just for the record, you are at NFER and you have been doing the research and quantifying what has been going on. Niamh’s assertion earlier on was that for 11 years the Government have not hit their recruitment target. Is that correct from your perspective?

Jack Worth: Yes, the last time that we hit the maths target was 2011-12.

Ian Mearns: It is important for the record just to clarify that, because it is all very well somebody saying something, but if that is then cross-referenced, it is important to do that.

Niamh Sweeney: In the programme of talks with the DfE we are extremely concerned that there is not, or does not appear to be—we have not had sight of—a workforce plan of how we are going to combat this, not just in maths but in all subjects.

Ian Mearns: That is a dreadful assertion that there is no workforce plan. Come on.

Niamh Sweeney: When we looked at the ITT statistics earlier this year, we were told that they were disappointing at best, they were not great, that there is a competitive graduate market. I recognise that there is a competitive graduate market, but the Secretary of State for Education is a Secretary of State for Education and that is what they should be focused on. We are in the depths of the biggest recruitment and retention crisis in education, after years of a pandemic where we have seen educational disadvantage increase. It is vitally important that there is a workforce plan, that we are thinking about what we are doing to protect the wellbeing of teachers and the retention of the teachers that we have now. If we are not recruiting enough, the ones that are there already will go. You need a mixture of both of them in the classroom and in the staffrooms, because it is your more experienced colleagues who help you work through difficult, tricky situations in your career, who help build your mastery of your subject and your skill. If they are not there and you have a high turnover of teachers—and you have the highest turnover of teachers in schools that are labelled “unsatisfactory” or “requires improvement”—that impacts children who are already significantly disadvantaged. If we are talking about the generational issue with numeracy, that is what we have to work to deal with.

Q52            Ian Mearns: I have been banging on about this stuff for quite some time because we have had schools and Ministers come to this Committee and say, “We’ve recruited enough teachers”. The fact that we have recruited 143% of target of history teachers or PE teachers is neither here nor there when you are undershooting on IT, physics and maths.

Chair: There is nothing wrong with history and PE, but I take the point.

Niamh Sweeney: History and PE teachers are teaching other subjects and our curriculum is being narrowed. DT, music, art and drama, all those things that have competent teachers that we have, we are finding that the curriculum is being narrowed to concentrate on English and maths because we do not have enough teachers in these areas.

Q53            Ian Mearns: I concur with the Chair that there is nothing wrong with history and PE, but when you are only recruiting 76% of RE, 69% of geography, 17% in physics, I am afraid to say that that does not look like a plan for having a well-rounded full and rich curriculum for the pupils for the future. You have talked about the workforce plan. Is there any evidence at all that anybody is saying that the DfE is trying to get its head around this in any sort of tangible way?

Niamh Sweeney: We wrote to the Secretary of State again yesterday.

Ian Mearns: Was that too much of a big question?

Niamh Sweeney: We wrote to the Secretary of State again yesterday. We have not had a response. We are in dispute with the Secretary of State about terms and conditions and we want to sit down and talk about this. The recruitment and retention crisis is part of that pay dispute and we want to sit down and talk to her.

Chair: I have to read out a short notice with apologies for those watching on Parliament TV. I understand that we have had a technical issue, so the last few minutes have not necessarily been broadcast but a transcript will be published in the next few days. I can assure everybody giving evidence that it will be recorded and published. Apologies.

Ian Mearns: I have been censored.

Niamh Sweeney: Cancelled.

Q54            Chair: Clearly the DfE was listening and decided to interrupt the broadcast for the last few minutes. Apologies for that. I presume everyone is content to continue, because it would be better that we complete the session and continue with the evidence. Apologies for having to interrupt there.

I suspect, of course, that the Department would point to some of the golden threads initiatives, some of the things like the levelling-up premium and the bursaries, which I noticed earlier as Martin was talking about golden handshakes, Niamh, that you did not look enormously impressed by. Could you expand on what you feel are the limitations of that approach?

Niamh Sweeney: The golden handshake would need to be extended to all subject areas in secondary schools apart from four at the moment. It just moves the problem elsewhere. If you have a good science or maths graduate and you are only getting a bursary for maths or physics, they will not teach biology. It just moves the problem.

We have to have a sustained plan for recruiting and retaining teachers, and that is connected to a range of things that I have spoken to you at length about before. It is about our accountability system, it is about league tables and how schools compete with each other for the brightest, the cream of the crop, it is about funding for special educational needs and disability and it is about all of those wider funding issues. You cannot have gold standard without a gold-standard infrastructure. Our school buildings in themselves are proving a real challenge for teachers and young people’s learning at the moment. Absolutely let’s have a discussion about those things, but it is really urgent at this stage that we think about a future generation of young people who are not being given the best chances in life.

Q55            Chair: Sir Martin, on that point you mentioned the issue of mentoring and agency as well, teachers having a say and being able to work together on these things. I have seen some excellent examples of maths departments where the new teachers were working very, very closely with the senior teachers on planning curriculums.

Sir Martin Taylor: The retention problem just goes away. Jack will know chapter and verse here but I would say that retention is as much as problem as recruitment. It is possibly quite an easy win, if I may say.

I would go back to what you were saying about golden handshakes and so on. It is a very major problem, getting enough teachers, but it is a complex one. There is not going to be a single silver bullet, but I do believe that golden handshakes can be part of it and different—

Q56            Chair: Is it not the challenge here that they already are?

Sir Martin Taylor: They can be improved. It is a market and the ones who are going to do maths have so many other options. They can go into finance; they can work as statisticians. They have lots of other lucrative things and you have to compete with that.

On the topic of differential pay in these key subjects, it should not be dismissed lightly. There was a report by the Gatsby Foundation, which looked very carefully at it. It found that, guess what, there was an improvement. My point is that if you try many things and they all improve, you might get to somewhere.

Jack Worth: I think that the early career payments are a route into that in terms of creating differential pay for those early career teachers, and recognise the fact that the average maths graduate after three years are earning more than they would as a teacher, whereas the average graduate is earning slightly less after three years than the teacher salary. There is already differential in outside pay, so recognising that and trying to support that by targeting maths teachers. There is also a more general issue of attracting and retaining enough teachers. Lots of teachers leave every year, although the attrition of maths teachers and early-career maths teachers is higher than the average for secondary teachers, so there are particular challenges of recruiting and retaining maths teachers.

However, we have good evidence that the early-career payments work at improving retention and they have been targeted at maths teachers. It is quite limited at the moment as a policy in its guise as the levelling-up premium because it is so focused on education investment areas. When we looked at the education investment areas compared to non-education investment areas, the recruitment and retention challenges look strikingly similar between the areas. It is not necessarily addressing a problem that those schools face, it is a more general problem in terms of the specific workforce issues. These are more general. The impact that it could have on a larger scale on the national market for maths and other subjects teachers could be beneficial.

On bursaries, the bursaries have been increased for the coming cycle. They are higher now. There is a £27,000 bursary and a £29,000 scholarship for maths, which is an increase from £24,000 before. We have also good evidence that bursaries are effective at increasing recruitment to initial teacher training, at least. We have less evidence about whether those additional teachers go on to enter the state sector and are retained but there is good evidence about the effectiveness of such incentives. Crucially, these can be targeted at subjects like maths, where there is a particular need or a particular shortage, to support those, but that should be alongside a range of measures, looking at the complex issue of not attracting enough teachers across lots of different subjects, such as addressing the reduction in pay competitiveness and reducing workload so that more teachers are retained and all of those factors.

Kevin Gilmartin: Our members who are the school leaders and the heads who are trying to implement the policies and recruit the teachers in the first place are broadly not in favour of differential payments for maths teachers or physics teachers as opposed to other forms of teachers. That tends to be around reasons of cohesion and working together as a team within a school. Also it can become very, very piecemeal and ad hoc from year to year about different subjects.

I think that we could be more creative and the profession would love to have more meaningful discussions about ways that we could attract more maths teachers and other teachers. One of the things that we put forward was possibly looking at getting the student loan paid off for the period of time that you remain a maths teacher or a physics teacher. There are ways of doing that but that is a bit of a kneejerk reaction to a fundamental problem of getting teachers in long term and keeping them retained. As Jack said, it is the maths teachers who after three or four or five years, when the going does get tough, when they end up teaching GCSE maths resits—there are 12 or 13 times more students doing those than there are doing core maths, 10,000 as opposed to 125,000. When they start teaching a lot of those classes, the attraction of the salaries in other industries might just kick in a bit.

Q57            Chair: One last question, if I may. To your point about having a greater numeracy focus, is there an argument that there is a different qualification required to teach numeracy than to be a maths teacher? If we had a qualification that was designed to measure numeracy, where will you security the entry level for a teacher who is going to teach that?

Kevin Gilmartin: That is a very fair point. If we looked at the content of that, there are other teachers who would be more able and possibly even willing to do that. Yes, that is a fair point.

Chair: Do you have a view on that?

Sam Sims: I would agree that it should. When we are looking at big solutions here, that is one of the places to look. What we need to avoid, though, is it being something that is not thought through and well planned but that is put on to a teacher of another subject. That is where real problems can occur.

Q58            Chair: If we all accept that there is a big workforce challenge here, that maths graduates are particularly attractive in the labour market and it is a highly competitive space and so on, part of that challenge must be recognising that you need a broader workforce than just maths graduates to meet that challenge.

Niamh Sweeney: We are also seeing a reduction in the number of primary ITT recruits.

Chair: We are also seeing a reduction in the number of primary places, of course, and pupils going to primary schools.

Niamh Sweeney: Primary teaching has always been a very attractive profession and to see a drop off in that is a concern, regardless of population numbers. The wider recruitment issues that head teachers are facing is that they put adverts out for an IT teacher or a DT teacher and they are getting no applications. That is hugely significant.

We also need to think about ITT reform. So many of our young teachers are not university based, they are not in departments of education learning about pedagogy and child development and how to support young people. They are workforce based and they are sometimes pushed into the deep end quite quickly and then they do not stay.

Q59            Chair: That is a whole other subject that we are keen as a Select Committee to look into. However, just focusing on the maths piece, maths and numeracy, if we take it as that broader subset, is there a particular level of qualification that the panel feels would be useful for people who are going to deliver something that is more numeracy focused or more at the core maths and functional maths end of things? Is there a level of qualification that would be suitable for the Government to look at for the workforce in that space?

Jack Worth: Currently the maths teacher workforce is definitely beyond just the maths graduates. Something around 30% of maths hours are taught by people with an ITT qualification. They have trained to be a maths teacher but do not have a maths degree. These might be people with economics, business or science degrees or any sort. Maths is quite a general subject. There is interest in joining maths even without a maths degree.

The challenge of something like core maths is that it is a level 3 qualification, so getting a PE teacher to do it is going to be extremely tricky. Even though it is more applied that does not mean that it is necessarily easier to teach. The Department for Education published a report looking at the different mix of specialists across different key stages and the non-specialists tend to be concentrated in years 7 to 9, key stage 3, much less so at key stage 5, which admittedly is maths A-level. However, it is a level 3 qualification and it takes a different level of demand for the teacher, and skills. I would be very reluctant to think more broadly and throw PE teachers into teaching a level 3 qualification, even if it applied.

Chair: PE teachers are getting a hard rap in this meeting, I have to say.

We have to wrap up there because we have overrun our time. It is an interesting area of inquiry and it has been interesting to have the input from the panel. Thank you all very much.