The ‘data’ skills we all need in a post-COVID world
Matt Homer and Rachel Mathieson from the School of Education at Leeds reflect on whether our post-16 national maths qualifications are delivering the data skills we need to navigate a post-COVID world.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has turned our world upside down, arousing increased levels of uncertainty and confusion. Paradoxically, whist we are increasingly surrounded by data, we have the unsettling daily experience of dealing with conflicting information, debates about correct interpretation, and differing views on ways forward in managing the crisis. How can we best ensure that as a society we have sufficient skills to make well-informed decisions in such challenging circumstances?
Our recent research on innovation in post-16 maths provision suggests we need to reconsider the purpose of the school curriculum, and that the approach of new qualifications known collectively as Core Maths can help to upskill the population in these key areas.
The maths curriculum does not always provide the right skills
The current education system in England centres on a knowledge-rich curriculum. The assessment regime tends to judge how well students can retain and reproduce content, and does not adequately test their conceptual understanding. A set of well-established and often overly revered qualifications, particularly GCSEs and A-levels, dominate a landscape of separate curriculum subjects, from which post-16 students must choose just three or four. Yet national evidence suggests that this system does not develop the skills we all need in life, work and/or higher education, with half of UK working-age adults having the numeracy level of a primary school child. Does the system produce a population sufficiently able to engage critically with the data and arguments they encounter in the media about key social and political issues?
In all areas of society, we need citizens with the confidence to understand and use relatively simple mathematical processes that arise regularly in our daily lives and work. We know from our research with teachers in the post-16 sector that many students, even those with GCSE Maths, do not really understand and cannot fluently work with, for example, percentages. At a personal level, this means they are likely to find it difficult to make any sense of interest rates and other aspects of personal finance when they need to. Just as importantly, they will struggle to understand, for example, the graphs presented in the government’s COVID briefings, or have a sense of the limits of modelling processes that are used to estimate the likely course of the epidemic in the UK.
Core Maths is a step in the right direction
In our recent research project, we have seen how Core Maths, a new and innovative set of post-16 maths qualifications, can play a significant role in developing students’ confidence and at least some of the skills necessary for the future. Core Maths focuses on the holistic process of ‘doing’ mathematics, with the aim of developing critical thinking skills alongside relatively simple mathematical techniques and communication skills (Department for Education, 2013). Our evidence suggests that a more ambitious, less rigid, curriculum could help develop better quantitative skills amongst the population.
For example, a good Core Maths class would not just be about solving the numerical problem to hand but would embed the mathematics in the real-world context. Students develop their skills in bringing criticality to any task, and to have the meta-level abilities to make some progress when tackling a new and challenging problem. They also need a good understanding of the context, and of the limitations that making assumptions brings to the solution, and the ability to communicate all these ideas clearly and concisely to others.
In Core Maths courses, and others which centre round applications of mathematics, the benefits of mathematical confidence and fluency can be seen in the students who have studied them. However, the dominance of longstanding, ‘gold standard’ qualifications such as A-levels, which tend to emphasise the ‘doing’ of mathematics in isolation, makes the growth and uptake of new, different qualifications a challenge. The risk is that these, arguably more useful, new courses might not survive over time. This is in part due to a lack of demand from employers and higher education, who are unfamiliar with these new qualifications and the real-world skills they bring.
The ongoing need to support curriculum innovation
Our education system needs to empower individuals by equipping them with critical and numerical skills that they can apply to new situations. Courses like Core Maths, which do not respect the usual boundaries of subject-specific content, allow students to do this in new and innovative ways. If you are confident and fluent in a range of quantitative approaches, and have adequate problem-solving skills, you can apply them to just about anything you will come across. In the long-term, this will improve decision-making at all levels, from the personal to the political.
Change in the education system can only be made possible by strong backing from, for example, the government, via appropriate financial support and accountability processes which help encourage the growth of qualifications like Core Maths. Similarly, the higher education sector and employers, both of whom have long bemoaned the poor quantitative skills of new students and staff, need to signal strongly the value of these and other skills that courses like Core Maths seek to engender (Homer et al., 2020). This will ensure the post-16 curriculum has a thriving, mathematically-orientated, course that develops key numerical and critical thinking skills, and ultimately improves the quality of entrants to employment, higher education and wider society in general.
References:
Department for Education 2013. Introduction of 16 to 18 core maths qualifications: Policy statement.
Homer, M., Mathieson, R., Banner, I. and Tasara, I. 2020. The early take-up of Core Maths: successes and challenges — Final report. London: Nuffield Foundation.
Smith, A. 2017. Report of Professor Sir Adrian Smith’s review of post-16 mathematics [Online]. London: Stationery Office. [Accessed 21 July 2017].
