The goal for new teachers appears to have been shifted to ensure the ball hit the net, but you can\u2019t fool a mathematician with statistics, says Bobby Seagull <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next month, the government will unveil its latest teacher recruitment targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year they trumpeted progress<\/a> in filling vacancies and achieving their goals<\/a>. In my subject, maths, they overshot their own target of 2,300 new teachers by over 10 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want more specialist maths teachers and those with a passion for the subject in classrooms, passing on wonder and energy for a topic too often wrongly characterised as dull and dusty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When my class is fully immersed in a rich mathematical problem, such as how everything on our phones \u2013 the apps, the pics, their friends\u2019 contact details \u2013 are all stored as binary numbers, you can see the moment it clicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maths isn\u2019t just all around us, it\u2019s the foundation of our technological future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Maths is the fuel on which AI runs. It\u2019s the key to mobile phone technology, driverless cars and contactless payments. And the advent of quantum computing rooted in the mathematical sciences will unlock innovations that we can\u2019t even conceive of yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of which is why the nation is going to need maths skills, perhaps more than any other, to succeed in the remainder of the 21st century and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s why the Campaign for Mathematical Sciences (CaMS) that I support did some digging into those teacher targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The results reveal some worrying thinking at the DfE. They ought to have known better than to juggle the numbers when dealing with mathematicians!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2025-26, some 2,588 new maths teachers started in schools, 288 more than the government target of 2300.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this was 477 fewer than the previous year\u2019s target of 3,065. It looks like the target was moved to ensure a bullseye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, that\u2019s fine if there is a diminishing demand for maths in school and maths skills at large. But nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a start, maths remains the most popular subject at A-level and the numbers sitting the exam continues to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over 112,000 pupils sat A-level maths last May, a four per cent year-on-year increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Young people want maths skills because they know how important they are going to be in securing satisfying and well-paid employment, and to understanding the world around them and its new technologies. Policy has to keep up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Secondly, maths classes are too big. CaMS carried out research through Teacher Tapp that showed 53 per cent of A-level classes in state schools contain more than 20 pupils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research by the Education Endowment Foundation found that significant improvements to teaching quality from class size reductions only begin once classes are smaller than 20 pupils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For mathematics this effect is especially pronounced, amounting to an average improvement equal to two months of additional learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the relationship between outcomes and class sizes is especially pronounced for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we need further evidence that smaller class sizes are best for pupils and for results we can look to the private sector. The same Teacher Tapp survey for CaMS found that just one in 10 private school classes exceeds 20 pupils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, we need maths skills. Separate research for CaMS into the number of job adverts citing maths skills showed a six percent increase in the five years to 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That trend will only accelerate as AI, and quantum technologies in particular, are embedded everywhere, including the classroom and staff room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope the government sets a target for maths teacher recruitment next month that is ambitious and appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to ensure the growing number of pupils taking maths A-level are taught in classes that give them the best chance to succeed and to develop not just the skills they want and the nation needs, but to generate the greatest outcome for any teacher \u2013 a genuine love and appreciation for the subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We need to ensure the growing number of pupils taking maths A-level are taught in classes that give them the best chance to succeed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":242782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"post-theme":[],"class_list":["post-242948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\tHitting the bullseye<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Too many children<\/h3>\n\n\n\n