Maths exam standards have declined significantly over the past 50 years, with generations of teenagers facing undemanding questions that do not test their independent reasoning abilities, a report said yesterday.
Maths also suffers from an image problem, with pupils avoiding it because it is considered "geeky", according to the report published by the centre-right thinktank Reform.
Elizabeth Truss, deputy director of Reform and one of the authors, said: "In today's Britain it is acceptable to say that you can't do maths, whereas people would be ashamed to admit they couldn't read.
"We need a cultural revolution to transform maths from geek to chic."
Good luck with the cultural revolution - you'll need it.
Somewhat miraculously, I managed to secure a maths higher in the 1960s. In all the years since, a little algebra and the rudiments of geometry have occasionally come in useful. But trigonometry? Quadratic equations? Calculus?
(What was calculus all about, anyway?)
No comments:
Post a Comment