Labour says it will replace Rishi Sunak’s demand for compulsory maths classes until 18, with better maths teaching for younger children and “real world” numeracy lessons for students in England.
For the initial years and primary classes, the proposal would introduce a new “phonic for maths” programme, targeting to repeat the focus on literacy in primary schools which was founded by the previous Labour government.
The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson will tell the Labour’s conference in Liverpool that, its curriculum review would “bring maths to life for the next generation”, using practical methods which are drawn from household budgeting, currency exchange rates for tourists, cookery recipes and sports league tables.
Recently Sunak has suggested a new requirement for students to take some form of maths classes after GCSEs, from the ages of 16 to 18, as a way of handling England’s underperformance and skills shortages in mathematics.
But most of the experts say that, these issues started much before and that the lack of specialist maths teaching in primary schools leads to gaps in knowledge within adults and where they are unable to understand basic graphs or calculate the value of supermarket offers.
General secretary of the National Association Paul Whiteman said: “It is vital that Labour builds upon the excellent maths teaching that is presently taking place in our primary schools. There is a high level of expertise within our schools, teachers and leaders have worked extremely hard to advance their maths curriculum in recent years.
Phillipson’s plan center’s on extra training for primary school teachers who are not maths teachers, to be funded out of the more than £1.5bn Labour expects to raise from adding VAT to private school fees and other tax breaks. They also wants to improve nurseries, “maths champions” to encourage learning before school.
The planned curriculum review would be tasked with “guiding teachers to show children how numeracy is used in the world around them and bringing maths to life”, and to teach percentages, using the concept of Isas.
General secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders Geoff Barton said, he was glad to know that, in England primary schools taught maths to a high standard.
