Education secretary admits schools don’t have enough maths teachers to implement Sunak’s plans – UK politics live - The Guardian

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Here are tweets from three commentators on Rishi Sunak’s speech on maths.

From Ben Ansell, a politics professor

From Sunder Katwala, head of the British Future thinktank

From Sam Freedman, a columnist for Prospect

This morning the Daily Telegraph has splashed on a story claiming there is a “growing expectation” in the SNP that Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, will soon stand down as an MSP because of the turmoil in the party she has left behind. Opposition parties are even calling for her to be suspended from the party she led for more than eight years.

Ian Blackford, the former SNP leader at Westminster, told the BBC this morning that this report was “idle speculation”. He said:

I think what you’ve seen is idle speculation which is taking place. I speak to my colleague Nicola on a very regular basis and I can tell you that she’s focused on serving the interests of her constituents.

Asked if she was now a distraction for the SNP, Blackford said:

I think history will judge all of us and history, I think, will show a woman that’s led our country, that led us through the Covid pandemic, that has given inspiring leadership to all of us over the course of that period she’s been in leadership.

Blackford also said there was “no reason … at all” why Sturgeon should be suspended by the party.

In a statement on Rishi Sunak’s plan for maths teaching, the National Education Union makes the same point as the one conceded by Gillian Keegan – that there aren’t enough teachers.

Mary Bousted, the union’s joint general secretary, said:

After 13 years in government there are not enough teachers to deliver the prime minister’s vision. His government’s policies for teacher recruitment are not bringing in enough new teachers. There is also a crisis of teacher retention as a result of low pay and excessive workload. The government needs to urgently get a grip of this workforce crisis in education.

Of his proposals on maths education, the prime minister says ‘we’ll need to recruit and train the maths teachers’ but he does not explain how the government will do this. Let’s not forget that this is a government that has cut its recruitment target for maths teachers by 39% since 2020.

And this is from Daniel Kebede, recently elected as the union’s new general secretary.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak will give a speech this morning restating his desire to ensure that all pupils study maths up to the age of 18. You could argue he is Britain’s first geek prime minister (he loves data and spreadsheets etc), and he first set out this ambition in a speech in January. But today he is going a bit further.

It is normal for prime ministers to change policy. But Sunak is trying something more ambitious. He wants to change social attitudes. According to the No 10 overnight briefing, he will complain that being bad at maths is regarded as “socially acceptable” (in a way, perhaps, that being unable to read or write is not regarded as socially acceptable). He will say:

We’ve got to change this anti-maths mindset. We’ve got to start prizing numeracy for what it is – a key skill every bit as essential as reading ….

I won’t sit back and allow this cultural sense that it’s ok to be bad at maths to put our children at a disadvantage …

My campaign to transform our national approach to maths is not some nice to have. It’s about changing how we value maths in this country.

Peter Walker has a write-up of the preview here.

But Sunak may struggle to change social attitudes towards numeracy when the government cannot even implement policy in this area. As Justin Webb pointed out on the Today programme this morning, when interviewing the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, the government published a review six years ago setting out proposals intended to improve “mathematics education for 16-18-year-olds in England with the aim of ensuring that the future workforce is appropriately skilled and competitive”. At the time the government said it would respond. Sunak’s speech today could be seen as an admission that it hasn’t.

And, in her Today programme interview, Keegan admitted that the government was failing to meet its target for recruiting maths teachers, even though that target has been cut. And she made the same point on Times Radio, saying:

We certainly need to do more to build up our maths teachers. That is why very recently we put in place a bursary for maths teachers and also physics and computer science as well of £27,000.

We have also increased what we call levelling up payments of £3,000 in certain areas to attract more maths teachers.

In an interview with LBC, Keegan said that the changes proposed by Sunak would not come into force before the general election. And, asked how many extra maths teachers were needed, she told Today:

It depends on what the expert panel say they’re actually going to be learning.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Senator George Mitchell, who chaired the talks leading up to the Good Friday agreement, speaks at the opening of a three-day conference at Queen’s University Belfast on the 25th anniversary of the deal. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton are among the other prominent figures speaking today. The full schedule is here.

10am: Rishi Sunak gives his speech on maths.

10.30am: Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, gives a speech in Glasgow arguing that “Labour is ready to deliver the change that Scotland needs”.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Morning: Keir Starmer is on a visit in the Midlands.

2.30pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

4pm: Peter Stanyon, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, gives evidence to the Commons levelling up committee about electoral registration.

If you want to contact me, do try the new “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. (It is not available on the app yet.) This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.

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2023-04-17 08:27:00Z
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