Laura Kounine and Elizabeth Truss: The lost mathematicians

Laura Kounine and Elizabeth Truss, Reform’s Education Researcher and Deputy Director, highlight the cost to the country of our desperate lack of mathematicians - as documented in their new report.

It is socially acceptable, cool even, to claim that you are “no good at maths” whereas people would be ashamed to admit they couldn’t read. This culture is endemic in Britain, pervading politics and the media. Years of reduction in examination standards and teaching to the test from the early 1980s onwards has served to increase the perception that maths is boring, difficult and geeky. The economic results are now emerging. Fifty percent of UK employers are dissatisfied with the basic numeracy of school leavers.  There is also a massive gap being created in high level mathematics, with City firms disproportionately recruiting non-UK graduates. This, as Michael Gove has recognised, has significant implications for the wider economy: mathematics is vital for economic growth. 

The modern economy is a “maths economy” in which mathematical skills drive value in industries from energy to financial services. The new “Masters of the Universe” in the City are no longer traders doing deals; they are the “power mathematicians” who model future trends. Yet, despite this country’s strong record of producing Nobel prizewinners and Fields medalists, the UK is under threat from new competitors entering this market.

Elizabeth Truss and Laura Kounine: The academies programme should be deepened and widened

Elizabeth Truss is Reform’s Deputy Director and Laura Kounine is Reform’s Education and Crime Research Officer.

The main political parties have both spoken of their support for the academies programme as though it is the litmus test of educational reform.  A new report published by the independent think tank Reform argues that the current academies programme is just the first step in education reform – it should be deepened and widened in order to facilitate improvement and progress in all schools across the country.   

Richard Tice, Chairman of Governors at Northampton Academy and author of the report, shows that much greater freedom of management has transformed the school leadership’s ability and willingness to take decisions.  Specific improvements have included changes to the teaching and management staff and several changes to discipline policy including a new off-site centre for excluded pupils.   

As a result a badly underperforming school is quickly improving, though major challenges remain.  GCSE performance has significantly improved since the new management has taken over, truancy has fallen by a third, teaching absenteeism is much reduced and the school receives three applications for every place.  The school has strengthened ties with parents and other local schools

Andrew Haldenby and Laura Kounine: Michael Gove should fund but not manage the nation's schools

Andrew Haldenby is Reform’s Director, and Laura Kounine is Reform’s Education Research Officer.

Last week's Conservative Green Paper has divided opinion.  We can discount the hostile criticism from most of the teaching unions; their opposition to the very principle of parental choice is steadily pushing them out of the mainstream of the education debate.  The real debate is between those commentators who concluded that the proposals would indeed deliver a revolution in schooling – and those who were concerned that the methods of reform might defeat its admirable intentions.  Who is right?

The first part of the paper set out the principles of new Conservative thinking on the curriculum and school management.  It proposed some adjustments to the compulsory requirements on schools, for example a phonics based reading test at six instead of a general literacy test at seven and compulsory setting in academic subjects.   Otherwise it claimed a shift away from central regulation.  Central government would only publish best practice, in very considerable detail, including the use of credits and debits for discipline and the optimal length of lunch breaks.

Anne McElvoy was surprised at this:

"Politicians who claim one day to 'set schools free' and 'trust the professionals', only to slide into the minutiae of how good heads do their jobs or whether children stand or sit to say good morning are inviting puzzlement."

We should share her concern.  The history of the last twenty years of education reform - begun by a Conservative government in 1988, and based on ever stronger intervention into the curriculum and teaching methods – is that governments are not the best judge of what works in schools.  In good schools, headteachers spend hours per week protecting their staff from advice on so-called good practice.  The Green Paper proposes an even greater intrusion than the most absurd of the Government's current directives – that on hospital cleaning, which reminds hospital staff to do “wall-washing” and “floor scrubbing”.  This is not the end to top down centralisation for which David Cameron rightly argues in the paper's introduction.