It’s 10pm on a Sunday night and I’m hunched over my laptop, my fingers performing a choreographed routine of punching numbers furiously into my phone’s calculator. I rub my temples in frustration. I’m trying to recalculate my monthly budget: my utilities provider this week increased the cost of my direct debit (for a second time this year), but the numbers aren’t numbering and every time I try to figure out what my partner and I each owe, I miss the mark. I know how to do the sums, but this evening, for whatever reason, I can’t access that information. It’s like all of my mathematical knowledge is locked away in some mental filing cabinet and, on some days, I can pluck the key out of my pocket and whip out the file with the relevant info – no problem – but on others, I can’t recall where I left the key and all that’s stored up there remains inaccessible.

A flick through my old school reports (which my mum keeps meticulously filed away in an obviously much more accessible system than the one my brain favours for mathematical things) reminds me that maths is something I’ve always been sub-par at. My year 11 report reads: “Abbi still needs to improve on some basic number work skills.” My year 10 report highlights “many areas of weakness”, while, encouragingly, my year 9 report notes that I found “some of the subjects difficult but to her credit she never gives up”. And so it continues down the years. Even as a frilly-socked year 4, my own self-assessment read: “Next year I need to work on my times tables and divison.”

As far as I’m concerned, my personal lack of maths expertise is sometimes inconvenient and occasionally frustrating, but it’s not something that I often give myself a hard time for. If recent comments are anything to go by, however, our prime minister would have me feel… ashamed of it. “Adults who cannot understand basic maths ought to be embarrassed” is the Rishi Sunak quote that’s doing the rounds on Twitter. It comes as he announced his plans to address the country’s “anti-maths” mindset by extending compulsory maths education. 

“The prime minister believes that everyone should be made to study maths to age 18, rather than the current endpoint of 16,” explains Junaid Mubeen, a mathematician, educator and expert advisor to non-profit game Teach Your Monster Number Skills. “This proposed policy stems from a belief that maths is too important a skill in society for us to ignore. Recognising that many students are not equipped with the skills or confidence they need to use maths in everyday life, Sunak believes that the remedy is to mandate another two years of maths across the board. Yesterday, he announced an advisory board that will review the current qualifications on offer and explore how we can foster a more positive mindset towards mathematics.”

The proposal itself, called Maths 18, is a head-scratcher. For starters, many struggle for years to grasp mathematical topics (myself included, as is evident from my reports) – what reason is there to believe that an additional two years of study will result in ‘success’? There’s also the reality that in order to increase education you need educators. And we don’t currently have enough of those.

“The most obvious logistical bottleneck in Sunak’s plans is the shortage of qualified maths teachers,” says Mubeen. “Nearly half of secondary maths schools have had to call on non-specialists to teach some of their maths lessons. Sunak’s plans will demand even more specialists, and there simply are not enough qualified maths teachers to make up the shortfall.”

The plans also make me question how much time Sunak has spent examining the current curriculum of late, which I’d argue isn’t adequately designed to ensure that every student achieves a certain level of understanding – particularly those with learning difficulties. Nor, to my knowledge, does it address some of the most important areas of mathematics. Take investing, for example, a subject I don’t recall even hearing a whisper of within my years of state school education. It’s therefore not surprising to me that research suggests only 36% of Brits are investing, despite it being an effective way to potentially build wealth. On Twitter, Sam Brook (@SlothBracelet) echoes the stance of many: “Rishi mate, if kids are leaving school unable to do maths, it’s because the government that’s been in charge of education for the last 13 years hasn’t done a good enough job,” they tweet.

I WhatsApped my sister-in-law, a primary school teacher, to ask for her thoughts. Unfortunately, her experience aligns with both my own and Brook’s thinking. “I think you are right in that [the current curriculum] doesn’t set children up for life. We have too much pressure to get results, so teachers end up teaching to a test, sadly. This means that coverage is often rushed and then children are not prepared, as they don’t have the basic skills to support them.” 

Although the initiative is still at an exploratory stage, disappointingly, Mubeen doesn’t expect to see any major curriculum reforms. “It sounds like Sunak merely envisages an extension of what is already offered in the school curriculum, which is desperately short-sighted because that approach evidently fails many students already.”

As for Sunak’s comments, they’re insensitive, classist and ableist, as people on Twitter have rightly highlighted. There are numerous reasons someone may struggle with maths, many of which are out of the individual’s control. To suggest everyone should have a base level of understanding is implausible, and to imply that anybody who cannot meet a threshold should feel embarrassed is, frankly, grotesque. 

“Sunak speaks from a position of privilege, having clearly benefited from a strong maths education,” says Mubeen. “To shame or ridicule those that struggle with maths is not only inappropriate, it also misses the legitimate target of criticism: a fundamentally flawed maths curriculum and a government that has underinvested in education for over a decade.” He agrees that the curriculum, rather than the time spent in education, is what needs addressing by the government. 

“School maths is in desperate need of a revamp that showcases the subject at its best: fun, playful and incredibly versatile. And schools need far more support in delivering maths under intense constraints. The embarrassment lies squarely with the government for its failure to make maths education a long-term, strategic focus. Even now it is adopting the same short-term thinking and the logic simply doesn’t add up.”

Speaking yesterday at an academy in London, Sunak said: “If we are going to grow the economy not just over the next two years, but the next 20, we simply cannot allow poor numeracy to cost our economy tens of billions a year or to leave people twice as likely to be unemployed as those with competent numeracy.” 

Twitter’s response was predictable, but no less amusing, with many taking to the app to question the government’s own understanding of maths based on the current state of the economy and the cost of living crisis. I, personally, can’t help but gawp at the audacity of the implication that our country’s potential lack of economic growth could be a result of its residents being mathematically challenged when, in 2021, an estimated 149.3 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in the UK, resulting in a total cost of £20.6bn. Meanwhile, our NHS is hanging on by a thread. Just a thought: perhaps if we addressed our mounting healthcare issues, including investing more in mental health care and paying workers fairly, people might not need to take as many sick days. 

Intrigued by Sunak’s suggestion that mathematical ability correlates with financial success, I put a question to the group chat. I asked my friends if they were ‘good’ at maths at school and what their grades were like. One, who is among the highest earners I know (particularly within my age bracket), shared that he failed – he doesn’t have a maths GCSE. Of course, he could be an exception to the rule. Another financially successful friend, whose job is almost entirely centred around budgets and figures, responded that he thought he could have achieved more than the C grade he managed at GCSE had he applied himself, but he found maths classes boring. His experience isn’t unique.

A 2012 study, published by Society for Research in Child Development, concluded that rather than being achieved by ‘smartness’, mathematical success is actually determined by motivation and how a person studies. This is something that Mubeen believes needs some attention in the curriculum. “[We need to] focus on the inherent fun and challenge that maths can bring,” he says. “Show students that maths is just a bunch of puzzles and intriguing concepts to be explored. Show them the maths behind their favourite video game. Show them that maths is far more than just crunching numbers. Once they buy into maths as a playground of ideas and thinking tools, their commitment to the subject will soar (and, by the way, they’ll acquire core number skills as a happy by-product).” A third friend in the group chat suggested that lessons on how to effectively use Google and a calculator would probably be sufficient in this day and age. She’s joking, but she’s got a point…

In an ideal world, we’d all be able to reel off our eight times tables and figure out percentages in a fraction of a second. But, certainly online, many are in agreement that it’s actually OK to be bad at maths and to have different skills instead – particularly when there is so much tech at our fingertips to assist us. The mathematically minded tend to be perceived as intelligent and, as a consequence, there’s an implication that those who struggle with maths are somehow less smart. 

But, there are a million ways you can be smart – and having a natural talent for numbers is just one of them. Being aware of your weaknesses makes you smart. Using a calculator when you have difficulty doing mental maths makes you smart. Asking Google for help when you can’t wrap your head around something makes you smart. Outsourcing numerical work, if you don’t feel confident doing it yourself, makes you smart. 

There’s nothing embarrassing about not having a natural aptitude for maths or using aids to help with solving sums. Something that is truly embarrassing, however, is shaming those whose skill level you don’t deem to be adequate. If anyone should feel embarrassed, Rishi Sunak, it’s you.

Images: Getty