More Maths Teachers Must Be Recruited, Admits Sunak

Rishi Sunak has admitted there are not enough teachers to fulfil his plans to boost maths learning, as he failed to say when he will deliver his vision to get everyone studying the subject until adulthood.

- ADAM FORREST

In the second speech to announce his “maths to 18” policy for England, the prime minister yesterday could not commit to begin rolling out the plans this year.

Mr Sunak, an investment banker before entering politics, insisted he does not want make maths at A-Level compulsory, but said being bad at maths should not be “socially acceptable”.

Critics have pointed out that the government has cut its recruitment target for maths teachers by 39 per cent since 2020, and has failed to even achieve that.

Mr Sunak accepted there aren’t enough teachers to even meet existing requirements – let alone fulfil his vision for maths – which he hopes will boost the economy, saying poor numeracy was “causing us to fall behind the rest of the world”.

“On teachers, yes we need [more] already, and we will need more maths teachers, and we know that,” he said at the London Screen Academy in Islington.

But he conceded the “big long-term reform” was “not going to happen overnight” as he faced questions over children’s education being damaged by a failure to end the teachers’ strikes.

Discussing the policy at a north London college, the PM admitted that despite progress the UK is “one of the least numerate countries in the developed world”.

He denied this was a failure of just previous Conservative governments as he conceded more than 1 million adults have numeracy skills below those expected of nine-year-olds and a third do not pass maths GCSE.