Royal Grammar School’s (RGS) deputy head, Chris Quayle, has welcomed prime minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to increase maths education to 18. Sunak announced the pledge in his first speech of 2023.

Sunak said that “letting our children out into the world without those (numeracy) skills is letting our children down.”

RGS’s Quayle said: “Being able to have a degree of understanding of how to use statistics or how to analyse is going to be increasingly important in a 21st century workplace.”

“From a conceptual point of view, it’s a really good thing to do. We definitely spend less time learning maths compared to other nations across Europe,” Quayle said.

Statistics in a recent Sky News article reported that at least eight million students in England have the same numeracy skills as a primary school student.

“We tend to tell our sixth form students is that they should really think about the career path they want to go into. We don’t really want to promote one subject over another, so there is a danger that would need to be avoided,” said Quayle. “Yes, it’d be great if everybody did maths to some degree, but we’ve got to be careful not to do that at the expense of humanities and arts.”

Challenges will faced by many secondary schools in England if new idea gets put in place. A recent article from The Independent reported that the Department of Education’s target of maths teachers has reduced from 3,343 in 2019/20 to 2,040 in 2022/23.

Across the country there is going to be a “13-18% increase in the number of sixth form students over the next decade”, Quayle said. This will impact the amount of teachers needed in secondary schools. There has been an increase of 4,400 of FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) teachers across the UK since 2020.

Marketing and communications manager at RGS Lucy Pringle told JesmondLocal: “We recently started to lead the National Mathematics and Physics SCITT’s (NMAPS) Newcastle Hub which is a base for school centred initial teacher training. We are actively trying to upskill our surrounding teachers particularly in maths to try and increase the capacity.”

The hub primarily helps those wanting to train as a maths or physics teacher across the UK. The Newcastle Hub is led by the RGS, whereas other hubs in the UK include locations in Bolton, South Manchester, Warwick, Oundle, Chiltern, Camden, Barnet and Dulwich.

Quayle added: “Students will definitely get on board with this learning idea as long as they’re understanding the benefits of it. There needs to be more explanation of this idea as it’s not very clear.”

Sunak’s “big idea” is likely to involve practical elements rather than written maths. He stated that this will “equip children for jobs in the future”.