Oxford Brookes University recently announced it will no longer be offering mathematics degrees. This follows reported reductions or proposed cuts at other universities.
This is a problem for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s vision for improved maths skills across the nation. Sunak has laid out a vision for young people to study maths to age 18. The goal is to ensure that “every young person has the maths skills they need to succeed”.
This focus on maths was also evident in chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s 2023 autumn statement. This included funding for a national academy of mathematical sciences to build links between mathematicians in education, academia, industry and government.
But the success of the prime minister’s vision, and the health of mathematics education more generally, rests largely on specialist maths teachers with a mathematics degree. These teachers are needed to educate young people in maths up to the age of 18. They teach the maths skills young people need to go on to study the subject further and use it in their future jobs.
But there is a chronic shortage of specialist mathematics teachers in schools – and the university maths education that trains these teachers is under threat.
University maths under threat
The cuts in maths teaching at universities has resulted in a new phenomenon: maths deserts. The closing of maths departments at universities that often serve their local population means that many, not just aspiring maths teachers, can no longer study mathematics beyond A-level in their local region.
Students with lower A-level results or from low-income families who are more likely to be living at home while studying at their local university, are disproportionately affected by maths deserts. And it creates a negative feedback loop that sees diminishing numbers going into maths teaching. This further erodes secondary schools’ ability to provide high-quality mathematics education.
Past president of the London Mathematical Society Ulrike Tillmann warned that maths deserts will turn post A-level mathematics education into “an almost exclusively high-tariff, big-city degree” essentially concentrated at large Russell Group universities. Moreover, graduates with degrees like this are less likely to pursue teaching as a career.
Protecting the discipline of mathematics
The importance of mathematics cannot be overstated, both now and for the future. Mathematics underpins almost all technological development in society, from cryptography and information security through to artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.
There is a trend for universities across the world to offer degrees in data science and AI. But a rigorous grounding in mathematics is required to ensure graduates are best equipped to meet future challenges in areas such as quantum computing or AI. This means that mathematics still needs to be taught as a discipline on its own, rather than being subsumed into seemingly more “job-ready” disciplines.
The same point applies to training future maths teachers. There is a world of difference between having a specialist teacher who loves the discipline of mathematics and is passionate about communicating it to their students, and one simply teaching out of a textbook. The former is crucial in ensuring a new generation of students go on to become excellent maths teachers and inspire future generations.
We need to equip our young people to manage the challenges of a rapidly shifting world. If we are to tackle challenges ranging from climate change to the explosion of AI in society and environmental resource management, then a rigorous education in mathematics – the subject Alan Turing considered a combination of intuition and ingenuity – is essential.
Neil Saunders, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Greenwich
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