Mathematics education in the United Kingdom is largely carried out at ages 5–16 at primary school and secondary school (though basic numeracy is taught at an earlier age). However voluntary Mathematics education in the UK takes place from 16 to 18, in sixth forms and other forms of further education. Whilst adults can study the subject at universities and higher education more widely. Mathematics education is not taught uniformly as exams and the syllabus vary across the countries of the United Kingdom, notably Scotland.
History The School Certificate was established in 1918, for education up to 16, with the Higher School Certificate for education up to 18; these were both established by the Secondary Schools Examinations Council (SSEC), which had been established in 1917.
1950s The Association of Teachers of Mathematics was founded in 1950.
1960s The Joint Mathematical Council was formed in 1963 to improve the teaching of mathematics in UK schools. The Ministry of Education had been created in 1944, which then became the Department of Education and Science in 1964. The Schools Council was formed in 1964, which regulated the syllabus of exams in the UK, and existed until 1984. The exam body Mathematics in Education and Industry in Trowbridge was formed in 1963, formed by the Mathematical Association; and the first exam of Additional Mathematics was first set in 1965. The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications was formed in 1964, and is the UK's chartered body for mathematicians, being based in Essex.
Before calculators, many calculations would be done by hand with slide rules and log tables.
The Nuffield Mathematics Teaching Project started in September 1964, which lasted until 1971, to look at primary education, under Edith Biggs, from the Schools Inspectorate.Times Thursday July 6 1978, page 4 The Nuffield Foundation Primary Mathematics Project began, with the 'Mathematics for the Majority Project' was for people up to 16 years old and was for slow learners.
The 1968 Dainton Report recommended that some sort of Maths education continued up to the age of 18.
1970s Decimal Day, on 15 February 1971, allowed less time on numerical calculations at school. The Metric system has curtailed lengthy calculations as well; the US, conversely, largely does not have the metric system.
At Ruskin College on Monday 18 October 1976 Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan made a radical speech decrying the lack of numeracy in school leavers, possibly prompted by the William Tyndale affair in 1975.Times Tuesday October 19 1976, page 1 The Prime Minister also questioned why so many girls gave up science before leaving secondary school.
But the Labour Party, instead, took curriculum change slowly, merely setting up the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of Mathematics in Schools, under Sir Wilfred Cockcroft, with Hilary Shuard and Elizabeth Williams. The subsequent report Mathematics Counts, was published in 1982; it offered few radical changes.
In March 1977 the government had a £3.9m scheme to recruit 1,200 more teachers.Times Wednesday March 30 1977, page 7 In England and Wales, there was a shortfall of 1,120 Maths teachers, 424 in physical sciences, and 525 in Design and Technology. It would be paid for by the Training Services Agency, and run by the Local Government Training Board.Liverpool Daily Post Thursday 26 May 1977 page 5 The scheme was open to people over 28, who had not attended a higher education course in the last five years.Times Thursday May 26 1977, page 3
1980s Electronic calculators began to be owned at school from the early 1980s, becoming widespread from the mid-1980s. Parents and teachers believed that calculators would diminish abilities of mental arithmetic. Scientific calculators came to the aid for those working out logarithms and trigonometric functions.
The BBC2 'Horizon' documentary Twice Five Plus the Wings of a Bird on Monday 28 April 1986, narrated by Peter Jones, looked at why people disliked abstract Maths, notably in the teenage years.Times Tuesday April 29 1986, page 19
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed that in some topics, the UK apparently had adequate Mathematics teaching, and from such reports Sir Keith Joseph merely implemented feasibility studies of national attainment standards, but the next education secretary, Kenneth Baker, Baron Baker of Dorking, wanted a lot more than mere feasibility studies. From hearing reports of national industrial failure being caused by insufficient mathematical abilities, he swiftly proposed a national curriculum in January 1987, to start in September 1988. Anita Straker and Hilary Shuard were part of the team that developed the primary national curriculum.
Since 1988, exams in Mathematics at age sixteen, except Scotland, have been provided by the GCSE.
1990s From the 1990s, mainly the late 1990s, computers became integrated into mathematics education at primary and secondary levels in the UK.
On Wednesday 18 November 1992 exam league tables were published for 108 local authorities, in England, under the Education Secretary John Patten, Baron Patten. The tables showed GCSE and A-levels for all 4,400 state secondary schools in England. Independent schools results were shown from 1993, and would include truancy rates. Left-wing parent groups, teachers' unions had opposed the move. Labour said it showed the government's simplistic approach to education standards, adding that raw results cannot reflect the real achievement of schools. The Liberal Democrats were not opposed, but thought that any information being provided was limited. Ofsted would be brought in the next year by Education Minister Emily Blatch, Baroness Blatch.Times Thursday 19 November 1992, page 1
The specialist schools programme was introduced in the mid-1990s in England. Fifteen new City Technology Colleges (CTCs) from the early 1990s often focussed on Maths.
In 1996 the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust was formed to run the British Mathematical Olympiad, run by the British Mathematical Olympiad Subtrust. The United Kingdom Mathematics Trust summer school is held at The Queen's Foundation in Birmingham each year.
The National Numeracy Strategy, costing £60m, was devised by Anita Straker, for the government's Numeracy Task Force, for primary schools, for implementation in autumn 1999. Prof David Reynolds, of Newcastle University, was the chairman. He had appeared in a Panorama documentary on Maths education on 3 June 1996.Times Monday June 3 1996, page 5 The 60-page report in January 1998 recommended that children under the age of 8 should not have calculators.Times Monday January 19 1998, page 6
The Millennium Mathematics Project was set up in 1999 at Cambridge by John D. Barrow, with 21 staff,Times Thursday February 16 2006, page 3 with deputy director Julia Hawkins, now directed by Julia Gog.
2000s Mathematics and Computing Colleges were introduced in 2002 as part of the widened specialist schools programme; by 2007 there were 222 of these in England.
The Excellence in Cities report was launched in March 1999, which led to the Advanced Extension Award in 2002, replacing the S-level for the top 10% of A-level candidates. Since 2008, the AEA is only available for Maths, provided by Edexcel; the scheme was introduced when the A* grade was introduced; the scheme was provided until 2018.
In February 2004, the Smith Report, by the Principal of Queen Mary College, looked at how good exams were. People could pass at grade B at GCSE, but had taken much different type of exams. The report concluded that people could pass such exams, but lacked scant real-life proficiency at Maths.Times Wednesday February 25 2004, page 2
A-level Maths entries dropped from 67,000 in 2000 to 53,000 in 2004.
The IGCSE, a more rigorous exam, was introduced in 2004, but the Labour government banned state secondary schools from being allowed to set the exam. It was viewed as 'elitist'.
In a 2006 House of Lords report on science education, the Lib Dem chair Baroness Sharp, took an interest in the reduced participation in Maths in schools; she had worked with the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. The 2001 report by the Lords Science and Technology Committee led to the National Science Learning Centre (Science Learning Centres) at National STEM Centre, with the University of York in 2006, with a Maths centre at University of Southampton.
The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics was founded 2006, after the Smith Report, being now in Sheffield.
The National Higher Education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (HE STEM) Programme was founded in August 2009 by HEFCE and HEFCW; the scheme had six regions across England and Wales, working with the universities of Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester Metropolitan, Southampton and Swansea; it was funded by £21m, and developed by the University of Birmingham STEM Education Centre; the scheme finished in July 2012. Also involved was the MSOR centre of the HEA (now Advance HE) Subject Centre, and the Centre for Excellence in University Wide Mathematics and Statistics Support at Loughborough University.
2010s The HEA subject centres closed in August 2011.
In September 2012 Prof Jeremy Hodgen, the chairman of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics, produced a report made by Durham University and KCL, where 7,000 children at secondary school took 1970s Maths exams. Maths exams results over the same time scale had doubled in grades, but the researchers did not find much improvement. Proficiency in routine Maths was better, but proficiency with difficult Maths was not as good.Times Tuesday September 25 2012, page 11
Mathematics free schools were opened in 2014 - the King's College London Mathematics School in Lambeth, and Exeter Mathematics School in Devon; both were selective sixth form colleges; others opened at Liverpool and Lancaster; more selective sixth form maths schools are to open in Cambridge, Surrey, and Durham.
A newer curriculum for Maths GCSE (and English) was introduced in September 2015, with a new grading scale of 1–9.
In August 2015 the ACME claimed that there was a shortfall of 5,500 secondary school Maths teachers, in England. But this shortfall was hugely uneven. Comprehensive schools in wealthy areas or state grammar schools were not commonly short of Maths teachers, but secondary schools in less-salubrious places were often hideously short of Maths teachers.Times Thursday August 20 2015, page 1
2020s The Academy for the Mathematical Sciences was formed in Cambridge in 2025, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.Academy for the Mathematical Sciences
Nations England
Mathematics education in England up to the age of 19 is provided in the National Curriculum by the Department for Education, which was established in 2010.
Early years education is called the Early Years Foundation Stage in England, which includes arithmetic. In England there are 24,300 schools, of which 3,400 are secondary.
The National Curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:
become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language. can solve problems by applying their mathematics to various routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of more straightforward steps and persevering in seeking solutions.