I do not think that most politicians are stupid. Of course, there are exceptions — those who just happened to fall into the right safe seat at the right time. On the whole, you do not get to be a politician — particularly not, say, a Prime Minister or a Cabinet Minister — unless you have some genuine intellectual capabilities. The ones who seem otherwise to you probably just don’t share your priors. 

All that notwithstanding, there are many times politicians come up with an idea that seems so utterly, bafflingly stupid that I am left doubting this general principle. Sometimes this is because they are speaking to a specific part of their electorate, just trying to say things they think people want them to say. Other times it is baffling.

The latest such pronouncement is Rishi Sunak’s suggestion that all pupils in England and Wales should study maths, “in some form”, up to age 18. It is difficult not to weep at the sheer senselessness of this. Either Sunak and his advisors are stupid, or they are simply hopelessly out of touch with reality. I don’t know which is worse.

Why do we think teenagers are any different?

The first problem is the pointlessness of trying to enforce learning on teenagers. Do a quick thought experiment with me: bring into mind a subject you are utterly uninterested in (for me, I choose cars). Now imagine the government passes a law forcing you to study this, say for three hours a week, for a couple of years. You might be lucky and get a highly capable teacher — who just might convince you, passingly, that cars are interesting. Most likely the best teachers will do all they can to work elsewhere, and you will get a poor communicator who is just doing their best. You do not care about cars, you have no interest, you do badly in exams. So what do you do? At best you pay little attention and hope that the time passes quickly. At worst you sit at the back and fool around. Certainly you are going to learn nothing (except perhaps an even stronger hatred of the whole automobile marlarkey).

Why do we think teenagers are any different? Anyone who has made even a passing attempt at instructing teenagers will know that they will not be more conformist than adults. By all means, Rishi, try to put this in place, but all you will achieve is wasting a lot of time and money.

I would have real respect for a politician who, in view of this, was prepared to make no subject mandatory at GCSE. Let’s stop trying to make teenagers study stuff they are not interested in and focus on giving them more options, particularly practical options. We are, after all, grossly in need of more manual workers. (Perhaps this is a suitable point at which to note that I am, amongst other things, a Maths teacher; so my suggestions here are, to some extent, to my disadvantage.)

The second reason is we simply do not have enough maths teachers already. Check out the statistics. “Almost half of secondary schools,” the Times Education Supplement reports, “are using non-specialist teachers for maths lessons.” The number of graduates training to be teachers, the Guardian adds, has reached “catastrophic” levels.

We have made teaching miserable and unrewarding

 If you are short of water, you do not attempt to open a new swimming pool. Similarly, you cannot add to the demand for maths teachers when you cannot cope with the current situation.

Why do we not have enough maths teachers? Partly this is a question of demand. Maths is required at GCSE and very popular at A level because of the connection with sciences. As a result there are probably more maths teachers than any subject. Certainly there are many many more maths teachers than, say, historians. But, critically, there is not enough supply. Not enough mathematicians see teaching as an attractive career. More pay might help — as I know myself, there is much more to be earned in a corporate IT job than in a school. 

This is perhaps not the key factor. Sadly, over the last few years, we have made teaching in state secondary school a miserable and unrewarding experience. Teachers are happy to work hard in term time — they appreciate as much as anyone that the long holidays need to be balanced with more intense school hours. However, we have overloaded teachers with far too many pointless and unnecessary activities, too many inspections and practice inspections, too much oversight and no trust and support. It is hardly surprising they vote with their feet.

A politician with real balls would not be putting out nonsense such as “we need everyone to do maths up to 18”. They would be asking how to change the culture where teachers are insufficiently respected by pupils and parents, spending most of their time on crowd control rather than teaching. They would be questioning the point of OFSTED, which is just an exercise in loading stress on staff with no particular educational value. They would want to know what value the Academies are adding, with their overpaid CEOs. They would want to attract high quality staff, and then support them in doing a good job. None of this is going to happen. It doesn’t make a good headline.