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Poor numeracy 'blights the economy and ruins lives'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17224600

Quote:

Poor numeracy is blighting Britain's economic performance and ruining lives, says a new charity launched to champion better maths skills.

The group, National Numeracy, says millions of people struggle to understand a payslip or a train timetable, or pay a household bill.

Government figures show almost half the working population of England have only primary school maths skills.

A government spokeswoman said poor numeracy was a national scandal.

The new organisation quotes from research which suggest that weak maths skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness.

It also wants to challenge a mindset which views poor numeracy as a "badge of honour", promising to name and shame public figures who boast of being bad at maths.

Last year's Skills for Life survey showed that the drive to improve literacy was working, with almost six out of 10 people in England having strong reading and writing skills.

But the same figures also showed that high level maths skills in England were declining.

Only 22% of people have strong enough maths skills to get a good GCSE in the subject - down from 26% when the survey was last carried out in 2003.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said: "We want the vast majority of young people to study maths up to 18 within a decade to meet the growing demand for employees with high level and intermediate maths skills.

"We are undertaking a root-and-branch review of how maths is taught in schools, attracting the best maths graduates into the profession."

Rachel Riley, presenter of TV's Countdown said: "If children are engaged with maths from an early age and enjoy the subject they are far more likely to be successful in it.

"We need to find imaginative ways to switch them on to maths and teach them to be proud to be numerate."

Bring back the 3 R's and the Dunce's Cap ..... :idc:

I'm not good at maths, it's not because I didn't want to learn it, it's because our maths teacher (later years) was an absolute arsehole who obviously didn't give a damn.

I'm rubbish because people disrupted our class all of the time and we never got much done..selfishness

To an extent I think you learn more than you're actually going to use in real life during GCSE..it's a bit stupid, to get a C you have to use trig, when are you going to use that in day to day life?

My year was the first to sit GCSE, the teachers didnt have a clue....we didn't have a clue...it was a mess....A right laugh...but a mess :).

I sometimes count random things.

Maths = death.

The only person I know who likes maths is Nicole on here o.o

I like numeracy, arithmetic and algebra... it was just when trigonometry and all the sin/cos/tan stuff came into it that I began to hate maths.

I prefered higher to foundation maths, i took a foundation course but paid to do the higher paper and passed :)

Tbh half of the bullsh!t they teach you is stuff that you aren't gonna use irl anyway.

The style of teaching they use with it is also terrible. Maths is just so God-damned boring. The fact that learning the subject revolves around repetitive exercises from a textbook really doesn't help things either.

Most maths teachers are terrible and don't seem to give a flying fuck as to how you do either. I'm and example of that. I had sh!tty teachers in the subject from Year 8-10 and as a result, I learned barely anything and failed GCSE. I had to re-sit in November and only then did I pass. :bored:

Give ed miliband and david camereron a maths test on live tv, that would be more interesting than a debate.

Admittedly,I hope this would be a rare occurrence.
I was in a store last week, the checkouts were down for a time due to no power,if you only had a few items you were allowed to go through with them but the operator had to work out the cost.

Mine came to only £4.38 for 3 items,(81pence, £1.07 and £2.50), the operator was faffing about with paper and pen to add them up. She came to 4 different totals,( 3 under the right amount and 1 well over, citing £5.60 onceover),before she finally let me add them up and she got it checked and I was right.

I was dumbfounded and left the store feeling really puzzled that without the machine,she was struggling to add up such simple figures.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lostalex (Post 4994168)

Give ed miliband and david camereron a maths test on live tv, that would be more interesting than a debate.

I second this notion, throw Osborne and clegg in for good measure

I did that quickly in my head and was 1p out...haha fail lol

Why do Women Avoid Math?

Sign Of The Times

Do you have any evidence to support that arista?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kizzy (Post 4995038)

Do you have any evidence to support that arista?

Its all around us.

On Ch5News yesterday
Presenter Emma said Maths scare her
she blaimed Bad Teachers.

Its a generalisation arista, nothing more.

things do not add - the children are leaving school more silly then ever < i wounder why this is ?

hi kizzy - would open the link but i dropped out of computing to concentrate on poetry - but i failed that as well lol hows you ?

I'm decent at general Maths but I have no time or patience for the more specialist branches of the subject.

Quote:

Originally Posted by madJOE (Post 4995112)

things do not add - the children are leaving school more silly then ever < i wounder why this is ?

Some people like maths, MJ, Others excel in different subjects. Children are becoming more intelligent (or better trained for exams at least) by the year.

You may be a master mathematician for all I know, but the quality of your written English is not especially high.

Judge not. Lest ye be judged

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jesus.H.Christ (Post 4995206)

Some people like maths, MJ, Others excel in different subjects. Children are becoming more intelligent (or better trained for exams, at least) by the year.

You may be a master mathematician for all I know, but the quality of your written English is not especially high.

Judge not. Lest ye be judged

I believe you have at least 3 errors in your own post ..... ;)