Why the UK has a problem with maths | FT Film

#maths #financialliteracy #education #ftflic #PISA

00:00 UK's poor number skills
02:32 Stealth maths in a garden
05:09 GCSE maths lesson
07:39 Learning about crypto
09:48 Fail culture
10:58 GCSEs outdated - Lord Baker
14:42 Poor numeracy is damaging
16:46 Need for financial literacy
19:18 Beauty of maths
23:23 Consensus for change?
25:20 A policy puzzle
27:10 SOHCAHTOA—help!


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[olliert]

As a maths graduate, my view is that maths is a subject where it's really important that you don't get behind... In other school subjects, you sort of jump around and can learn different topics which are more contained within themselves, filling in gaps of knowledge later. With maths, everything sort of builds on top of itself. I think a lot of students find maths very difficult because they don't have super solid understanding of the stuff previously learnt, and so new stuff is even harder to pick up. In order to 'survive' maths you really need to go back to the part where your understanding starts getting sketchy and go from there, but there's not much scope for this during a school year.

[beewa]

A tale of two maths teachers. I was put in the lesser maths class for studying for exams (CSE and O Level era) and up until then wasn't interested. But this maths teacher (Mr P) was different. He taught the whole class and then those who didn't understand could line up at his desk for one to one help. Wow, a teacher who wanted to help his students and wasn't just passing time listening to his own voice. At the end of the year some of us moved to the O Level class where the teacher (Mr R) felt it okay to humiliate, intimidate (mainly the asian girls) and insult the class. At the end of the year he made everyone do CSE. I know some, whose parents could afford it, took the O Level elsewhere. Further education and university education, for me, has dimmed the pain of those earlier experiences.

[gregreynolds]

As an engineer who didn't get good at mathematics until university, my view is that maths becomes so much more comprehensible when you have a real world problem to solve with it. The problem is that it's often only the higher level problems that need maths to solve them. I suggest one way of teaching maths to the younger might be to deliver it through practical problems, for example making a hexagonal frame out of a single piece of wood, or trying to work out the minimum amount of material to make something - and then actually making it and seeing where you went wrong.

[nobodyofimportance]

I was a teenager who went through an English high school maths education as an undiagnosed autistic with ADHD. I excelled in English and the humanities, even in the sciences I was a high performer. In the Maths classroom, however, I found myself in an environment that was impatient, hostile, and humiliating. My teachers never made an effort to make the lessons interesting, but they would always make an effort to humiliate me whenever they had the chance to do so. You weren't listening for a moment? Get out the class. You get a question wrong? Get out the class. There was one teacher who i had for Maths who i hated and who hated me, and he made my life in that classroom a living hell (he would later turn out to be a pedophile, which was an unpleasant revelation). Years after that experience i went through life under the assumption that i had no maths aptitude, all because some shitty teachers convinced me that i had no ability in the subject. In contrast, my Humanities and English teachers were always very nice, patient, and encouraging. I don't think it's a coincidence that i excelled in the classes that were positively reinforcing and patient. I think that, were maths classes more patient, encouraging, and inclusive of different minds, instead of prone to making an example of the outliers, then more people wouldn't be afraid of it

[debasishraychawdhuri]

When you realize that math is just a proper way of reasoning, you would understand the importance.

[guitarman]

I found maths at school to be very dull and demotivating. Just doing problems out of a textbook with no reason or purpose as to why we were doing those problems. Only to pass an exam ultimately. Now at 32, I see maths differently and in the past have done maths problems on platforms like Khan Academy. Such platforms have made me enjoy and appreciate maths much more than when I was at school.

[ExamSolutions_Maths]

Great video and great to see FT covering this epidemic.
I did my BSc degree in Maths, which helped me get my first job as a City Trader, and now I'm fortunate enough to teach maths to millions of students around the world and help to change lives, which is the most rewarding of all. None of these could have been possible if I didn't get the right teacher. We need to provide more incentives to attract the best teachers into the field and embrace technology to enhance the student's learning experience.

Core Maths is a great skill but we also need to educate our students that the logical reasoning and problem-solving skills required for 'unnecessary' topics like trigonometry and quadratics can be equally as important in the real world.

[SimPilotMika]

I love maths, it’s so relaxing, factual, routine, the language of the universe, one of the most helpful school subjects. I’m probably going to be the first person to say this, but I miss maths class

[freemanol]

I used to tutor secondary school students while I was in university there. The level of maths shocked me. There are 15 year olds who have no idea how to do basic algebra. I don't blame them, their school system is so broken

[vanellaicecream]

The reason that 30% of people fail GCSE maths is because the exam boards decided that the bottom 30% get a 3.

[bgb]

as a maths and physics undergraduate, I’m all for the split in mathematics, having a core/practical maths and a more pure/abstract maths would serve students well I think. Day to day there actually isn’t much use for understanding higher level maths concepts, however they’re crucial and lay the foundation for many jobs based in engineering, programming, finance, data analysis, etc. Any student hoping to peruse a career in any of those subjects MUST have a strong understanding of high level fundamental maths concepts, however the majority of the population, simply won’t have any use for them, so by instead focusing on practical applications that’re often used day to day, students will likely be more engaged, or at least have a better appreciation for the utility of the subject, and more importantly, be able to aptly apply mathematical skills when needed.

I think there also needs to be a fundamental change in our process of teaching mathematics. Maths cannot be taught like history or biology, there needs to be a much bigger focus on understanding proofs, logic, and derivations. With our current curriculum students aren’t pushed to understand maths concepts, only use them, and far too little time goes into explaining why it works. It seems some educators believe that trying to explain the derivation of formulas would only confuse students, particularly those struggling already, but I reckon the reason they’re struggling is because they haven’t been shown why it works in the first place! the UKMT does a great job of this, their challenges are full of much more practical questions with a much stronger reliance on simple logic rather than abstract mathematical concepts, actually displaying the power of rational thinking and some basic algebra, geometry, and numeracy skills and how it can solve day to day problems.

that’s just what I reckon though

[miguesilva_o_tolo]

As a Portuguese teenager, I can say all the subjects are progressively connected in our school system. Like you need maths to understand chemistry, you need it also to the Portuguese subject and vice versa. You need to understand physics to perform better at P.E. In conclusion, by connecting and showing how connected these subjects are, the school system is showing us how important each subject is in our daily lives, so the overwhelming majority of us can understand the purpose of each one.

Sorry for my English, it is not the best ahah

[BugCatcherSimp]

I'm 17, I took my GCSE maths exam in 2022. I found mathematics hellish. It's haunted me my entire life, I'm genuinely interested in Computer Science but I'm hindered by my Grade 4 (C) Pass grade at GCSES. Any choices I have in the future now were dictated by my state school mathematics lessons, we weren't taught to love maths like I'm starting to now, we were taught to chance it and get a lucky pass grade at a Foundation Exam. Even though I passed, most universities require a B, which was unobtainable for the papers I sat, again, which I had no choice but to sit. Something has to change for the better, Maths is pure, problem-solving awesome, but the classes were dire, unimaginative and were mostly taught by part-time PE teachers my school had available. Just because we hadn't unlocked our skills as fast as everyone else, we were given nothing to work with or for, and better yet, became ridiculed by staff and other students constantly for not progressing. We deserve better than this, and so do the minority of passionate Maths teachers left, always on ludicrously low wages. Sort out your schools Britain.

[NerreraFightStories]

Feeling this now as an adult working in Finance. Not like you need incredible Maths skills for the job I work but I am insecure about my Maths skills and it all boils down to the terrible teaching and support I had in a failing UK school. Was stuck with the same teacher for the majority of secondary school and he was just awful, fell way behind and ended up with a C at GCSE.

I have a Masters in Finance and scraped passes in some Maths related modules so I'm not absolutely hopeless but I found it terribly hard.

Aged 25 now and not sure if I can get to a good level or I'm stuck this way.

[marionettekent]

21:33 yes in Hong Kong we are almost two to three years ahead of the UK in terms of the maths curriculum, but the way we achieve that is by the form of cognitive bullying the professor mentioned. We just bully students so hard and all day from home to classroom that it somehow worked out for a larger proportion of students. Pretty sure the UK doesn't need that. But admittedly even in academia the arithmetic and statistics ability of British educated people can be improved. The current curriculum is good enough if it is fully understood. The problem is about the teaching and the learning culture, not for how long you study maths.

[samanthaperry]

Honestly, before they think about maths at the higher ages, they should investigate how children progress at primary levels. I did work experience at a primary school and I had to do extra reading with children who were struggling to read (5-6 year olds) and a lot of the kids who were struggling just needed someone who was willing to be patient to let them sound out the words and think about the context of what was happening in the text (while not making them feel embarrassed for not being fast enough). When they got it on their own (admittedly after a while), it was amazing to see how those kids became more confident and lit up. Often, there is just not enough time for those kids and they just get left behind. As a result they just disengage and stop trying to learn because they can't keep up.

I remembered this because now that I'm studying maths at uni, I have really underestimated the power of reading and comprehension, especially for tricky maths questions (that are now put into real life contexts) and I just think that our foundations in reading and learning how to learn are just too weak. It's only now, at uni, that I have realised that I don't know how to learn and think for myself. I am only starting to learn to think critically and use what I have to solve harder questions (break down problems and solve them in parts). I was super lucky to have parents who were willing to invest time into securing those foundations at home, but I am aware that a lot of families don't because they lack the resources, time or confidence to do so.

[earljohnbautista]

😮 I'm still grateful for my school back when I was still in my elementary to high school (Philippines) how much the academic curriculum then was heavily focused with math and science. We weren't allowed to use calculators even to solved quadratic equations and complex computations. That really helped me finished my undergraduate program in Computer Science.

[antm]

Because maths is taught in a stupid way in the UK. If I didn't have indian parents who taught me how to do maths the way they learnt, I'd be so behind. It's getting worse. When I'm in shops etc the staff are frequently unable to do mental calculations to give you change unless they have a calculator. The government want a thick generation so that we don't ask questions.

[victoriab]

A system which says that you are not allowed to fail, but which enforces failure on 30% of the population, is a system which is going to consistently make life worse for 30% of people. A system which chooses pass boundaries based on how many people get a grade, is a system in which students are not learning to be good at a subject, they are learning to be better than others. It is a system which enforces the idea that you can only succeed if other people do worse than you.

[heronimousbrapson]

I'm not sure about the UK but my experience with maths here in Canada in the senior grades was such that the subject was taught with the objective of culling out those who would be good candidates for a academics, engineering, etc. and forgetting about everyone else.