I can’t be the only person who nearly dropped their tea yesterday morning when I heard on the Today programme that Rishi Sunak was planning to insist that all children study maths until the age of 18. For those of us not, er, gifted in that department, the thought of an additional two years of trying to keep formulae and fractions from sliding off our brains raised a shudder, even at a safe distance of nearly 30 years.
His justification, that improving numeracy will increase innovation and help ordinary people develop useful life skills, isn’t insane. It did indeed take me a while to grasp what it meant to get a mortgage (got it now! Not enjoying it!); I do indeed struggle when presented with numerical data in almost any form, even colour-coded.
