I LOVE MATHS... BUT NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE SHARE THAT PASSION!

I have a had a great week working with some amazing young people who talked so positively about their interests and passions... social media, games, netball, gymnastics, kick boxing, swimming, reading. Sadly, as a maths teacher in the dim and distant past, no one talked about a passion for number! 

I always thing it is interesting that while literacy rates are improving, the proportion of people with poor numeracy skills, skills no better than those expected of an 11-year-old, is about half of the adult population. Part of the problem is that it seems to be socially acceptable to boast of poor mathematical skills. Sad really because a number of studies have suggested that numeracy is more important than literacy to one's future. There is a strong correlation between lack of numeracy and disadvantage... people with poor numeracy skills are twice as likely to be unemployed while two thirds of young people in our prisons have the lowest levels of numeracy.

So many young people I meet are passionate about sport, the arts and music and see maths and number as a problem. I think that the problem is that improvements in basic skills have focused on literacy, sport and the arts partly because we struggle to find enough secondary maths teachers and teachers in primary schools are not confident enough or well-trained enough to be effective numeracy teachers. Those with a strong background in mathematics also have far better opportunities outside teaching. As I said to so many young people this week, don't let anyone tell you that you can't do maths, it's that you can't do maths yet! You can do anything if you believe you can and success is simply about passion, hard work, focus, determination, persistence and practice!  

How do we solve this? Discuss!