>Gremlins in white boiler-suits harassed Britons in the early 2000s, springing from cupboards, drawers and sofas whenever people were asked to read or add up. The critters were the stars of government tv advertisements that aimed to prod adults into signing up for lessons in maths and literacy. The adverts drove adults into classrooms—and sent toddlers screaming from living rooms. For a while regulators banned them from appearing before 7:30 at night.
>The oecd, a club of mostly rich countries, found in 2012 that 9m adults in England did not reach minimum standards in literacy, maths or both. They might struggle to understand all the instructions on a bottle of aspirin or work out how much petrol is left in a car from looking at a gauge. The government says that half of grown-ups today can do sums no better than a primary-school child. That weighs on efforts to boost productivity.
>The oecd found that most of Britain’s low-skilled adults were working. Many were outwardly well-qualified: they included 10% of university students and, rather alarmingly, 7% of recent graduates. England seems to be unusual in that young people who have only recently completed formal education are about as innumerate and illiterate as older adults.
>Over the past decade the government has made changes to the final few years of secondary schooling—the period in which Britons’ basic skills appear to slip most dramatically. A revamp in 2015 aimed to make gcses (national exams that are taken at the age of 16) more demanding. Pupils who do not earn passes in maths and English must keep retaking those tests until they are 18.
>That might not be enough. In many rich countries, youngsters study maths and their native language until adulthood. In England, kids who manage to scrape a passing grade continue to ditch these subjects early. And the merits of making low-performing pupils sit endless retakes are doubtful. Sam Sims of National Numeracy, a charity, says the practice demoralises adolescents for whom standard schooling has already failed.
>Meanwhile adult education has gone to seed. Since the days of the gremlins, grown-ups who lack basic qualifications have been offered free night classes. But the number enrolling has fallen from a high of 1.8m in 2012 to 700,000 last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank. Employers do not seem fussed. A government survey finds that only 3-5% of companies with low-qualified staff think their workers need to brush up on basic skills.
>Adults rarely discuss embarrassing deficits with friends or bosses, says Alex Stevenson of the Learning and Work Institute, another think-tank. So getting them to enrol in skills courses is hard work. Colleges struggling with tight budgets usually find there are more profitable things to do, even if the government is willing to cover course fees. These days only two-fifths of people appear to know that free help is available, reckons Mr Stevenson—and they are largely not the ones who need it.
>The government is now putting some £560m ($640m) into “Multiply”, a three-year project to boost basic numeracy. Exactly what it looks like will vary by region; local authorities have been told to create schemes that match needs in their areas, selected from a menu of ideas drawn up in Westminster. The government wants to see lessons offered in workplaces. It also wants officials to create schemes for particular groups such as parents, prisoners and would-be nurses.
>That project will have to surmount shortages of maths tutors (many of whom now earn a crust helping teenagers with their many resits). Advocates of literacy wonder why their subject is not getting more attention. And all this probably comes too late to boost England’s performance in the next international ranking of adult skills, due to be released in 2024. Prepare for another ugly surprise.
I’m a software engineer, I’m doing pretty well in my career and as part of the work I do, I’m building complex data warehousing systems and reporting for critical infrastructure.
I was talking to a friend about this particular topic recently who has an 8 y/old with maths homework that neither of us can help with. I don’t remember how to do long division, or simple pen and paper multiplication as I’ve not needed it to date.
I’m seriously thinking I’ll need to crack out the text books to refresh my basic maths skills for my 4 y/old so I can help him in future.
They told me I wouldn’t carry a calculator with me every day…
I heard that only around 35% of the UK population consider themselves to be good at maths. That’s terrible. Luckily, the other 75% can add up OK.
I lack basic numeracy skills, it’s a challenge and I’m trying to help my kid with her math homework. Luckily her dad is good at maths.
Ah english literacy my one failing. But I am self taught so can not complain too much.
There was an interesting discussion on The Infinite Monkey Cage a while back ([https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj)) about the challenges of teaching maths. We really need more people doing what they did in this episode and being honest about the challenges of mastering numbers and their relationships. I was getting my maths GCSE results at the same time as my A-Levels (third time lucky!) and it was refreshing to hear swotty brainiacs talking honestly about their own struggles with mathematical concepts, my teachers mostly left me feeling pretty worthless when I didn’t understand back in secondary school. I started teaching myself again online after I listened to the episode.
One of the problems with grade school education is that they’re teaching as if we’re still living in 1999. I’ve worked in accounting/finance for years and not once have I needed to do mental math. What IS imperative for my career progression is technology proficiency.
This may be controversial but I think anything beyond very basics maths should be elective, for students who wish to go into rigorous scientific or medical fields. For everyone else I think it’s far more important to focus on technology, basic coding, etc. We live in a completely different world now and what we teach kids, as well as uni admissions requirements, should reflect the world we ACTUALLY live in and the skills required to thrive in it.
I remember reading an article on here that the M&S boss is now offering Maths and English lessons to employees for this reason
Of course.
The government introduced a new curriculum in 2013 and it’s unteachable. It’s shit. Every last bit of it. The material is way too difficult, it’s impossible to teach within a school year, there physically aren’t enough hours and the standards are ridiculous.
I could tell you anything you want to know about the curriculum and you will be horrified.
Roman numerals, brought in in 2013, for all year groups. It’s 2022.
Tory cunts would bring Latin to state schools if they could, it’s all a cruel joke
Education is fucking appalling in this country, I can’t speak for others but it’s fucking terrible and it’s been grinding to a slow halt for years, in a further ten years you won’t believe how anxious and incapable this generation are, I just hope at some point some sort of social care dynamic is established in the UK before they’re thoroughly ruined
Given how little support, understanding or empathy there was for kids with dyscalculia when I was a kid in school, it’s no wonder. I lost interest after teachers laughed at me for the mistakes I made and got frustrated with me or told me off in front of the class for struggling. I learned enough to barely pass my GCSE and that was it.
Every English class I saw kids with dyslexia (rightly) get support and accommodation but it seems the numeracy side hasn’t caught up. When you don’t feel supported you stop trying and you let the skill fade.
The schooling system really needs to change.
It is still stuck in this idea that we all want to go do small repetitive tasks for our bosses in office buildings.
Some of us want to run our own business, become a tradesmen, be athletes etc
When I was in school (late 90s through 2012), I learnt nothing that was helpful in doing what I do today.
So many children give up on school as they don’t see why they should bother when they are so depressed about the future or don’t have a clue what they want to do or school has just burnt them out.
It needs to be a place for children to explore opportunities and learn useful things not be conditioned into working in a suit and tie office block…
Anyone who has interacted with the average British adult knows this.
It’s even funnier when you consider how easy English is to learn compared to other languages.
At my company we give everyone a maths/logic test for any job.
We really don’t care what your qualifications say – we’ve reached the point that we don’t trust them.
A majority of people in the U.K. have abysmal maths skills, don’t understand percentages, say “I am competent with Excel” then promptly display that they are absolutely useless as the only thing they can do is type in boxes and maybe sum 1 range but then have no idea what to do with it.
The “I’ve got a calculator in my pocket” brigade have no idea how to use a calculator for anything more complex than 2+2 type addition.
The bar is low and gets lower constantly….. but then somehow these same people score high grades.
Wow, I am not surprised, I guess.
But what is surprising is that the UK is the only country in the comparison that has not made any progress in the last 40 years. That is shocking.
I’m going to take any report that can’t decide if it’s talking about Britain or England with a large punch of salt.
Because we don’t really need it most of the time. And if we need basic maths done for something, we’re going to get a calculator out instead.
I forgot 99% of everything I ever learned in School because it’s all useless and will never get any real world use from me. Everything I need in life has been self-taught. All of this goes for Maths though, I feel like bad Literacy is alarming. Because being able to read and write properly is way more important than basic maths is to a person’s average life.
Considering the government didn’t seem to understand exponential growth throughout the whole pandemic I’m not sure even the adults running the country know basic numeracy.
I have never really understood this whole “I haven’t used it for years so I forgot”. You probably didn’t know it very well in the first place without the aid of notes, a teacher helping you etc. you don’t just forget things that you know well especially basic things like this article alludes to.
You don’t forget how to spell a word just because you haven’t written it for decades or forget how to ride a bike if you haven’t ridden one in years, it is all muscle memory. In order for muscle memory to kick in though you need to have learned that thing to the point of being unconsciously competent.
This seems more aimed at people who never properly grasped basic numeracy and literacy in the first place and now tell themselves they have forgotten it.
Including many in the treasury judging by this morning’s announcements…
30 seconds reading this subreddit could have told you that.
If the a’holes at school would have paid attention instead of taking the mick out of people like me, whom were attention maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t have turned out as thick as 2 short planks.
I’ve never been able to do mathematics in my head, but if I’m given a piece of paper to do it on it’s no problem and I couldn’t tell you why that is.
literacy is fine, but again i find it difficult to read something out loud cause I just don’t.. do anything like that in my daily life, spelling has always been my weakness however it’s something i’m not proud of.
Of course these illiterate people all have the vote and are easily manipulated by the media percentages and big numbers on red buses. And that’s why we ended up brexiting.
Most of this sub lack basic business knowledge too we should consider that as important as numeracy
There were always a lot of thickos in school, or people who didn’t or couldn’t take school seriously in their youth, for whatever reasons (home problems, parental problems, bullying, anti-education youth culture, bad teachers). People get really low grades in their exams and then don’t magically get the skills later, unless they go back to school again or make an effort to study on their own, but most people aren’t interested in that and it’s not easy to do, even if the interest is there. So maybe it shouldn’t be a huge shocker, even though in the past it did shock me when I started working. I calculated a colleague’s pay for her once and she said something like “I’m a woman, we aren’t good at maths” – dafuq?
I think it’s not a big deal if people are leading successful and fulfilled lives, but obviously some people are held back by it, like I knew a guy who wanted to be a teacher but needed to redo his GCSEs, but he couldn’t attend classes because he was a shift worker. And it’s probably ideal to have an educated populace and this is an indicator of that, but also it’s important to have a public that can comprehend information so they can have some chance of analysing it and making more informed decisions – although I can see how an educated population can bring its own problems for those with power and for society too, like being harder to pull the wool over the eyes of and being more likely to feel dissatisfied and depressed while doing unintellectual jobs.
I’m curious to know how they assessed the skills. It says people have skills that aren’t even on par with primary school kids, so I guess that’s KS2? Not sure what level the functional skills tests are that they do in the job centre etc, but I know someone with an A in A-level maths who failed their maths test lol, but I’m sure they have the maths and English skills needed to navigate day to day life and generally aren’t hindered by any lack of numeracy or literacy skills.
Not that I’m one to defend the education system, but it bears repeating for those not aware that some of the people we live alongside in society were able to finish education aged 15 and swear to never open a book again if they didn’t have a good time at school – and they have just as much of a vote & voice as you.
I think it really doesn’t help that there’s a strong anti-intellectual streak in British society. People are more often denigrated than celebrated for knowledge-based skills and achievements.
The amount of emails I get in my job from colleagues in various positions of seniority that have awful spelling is alarming. What’s worse is I’m in IT and occasionally assist with bulk communications being sent out and quite often have to send the copy back to the comms team to question some sort of basic spelling/grammatical error…
People are focussing on numeracy but I think the basic lack of literacy is arguably worse. Almost all jobs now involve a ton of emailing and being able to succinctly get your point across in written English is such a vital skill
Doesn’t surprise me when a lot of people “brought it” from the shop, or even worse are trying to buy a Chester draws on market place
31 comments
>Gremlins in white boiler-suits harassed Britons in the early 2000s, springing from cupboards, drawers and sofas whenever people were asked to read or add up. The critters were the stars of government tv advertisements that aimed to prod adults into signing up for lessons in maths and literacy. The adverts drove adults into classrooms—and sent toddlers screaming from living rooms. For a while regulators banned them from appearing before 7:30 at night.
>The oecd, a club of mostly rich countries, found in 2012 that 9m adults in England did not reach minimum standards in literacy, maths or both. They might struggle to understand all the instructions on a bottle of aspirin or work out how much petrol is left in a car from looking at a gauge. The government says that half of grown-ups today can do sums no better than a primary-school child. That weighs on efforts to boost productivity.
>The oecd found that most of Britain’s low-skilled adults were working. Many were outwardly well-qualified: they included 10% of university students and, rather alarmingly, 7% of recent graduates. England seems to be unusual in that young people who have only recently completed formal education are about as innumerate and illiterate as older adults.
>Over the past decade the government has made changes to the final few years of secondary schooling—the period in which Britons’ basic skills appear to slip most dramatically. A revamp in 2015 aimed to make gcses (national exams that are taken at the age of 16) more demanding. Pupils who do not earn passes in maths and English must keep retaking those tests until they are 18.
>That might not be enough. In many rich countries, youngsters study maths and their native language until adulthood. In England, kids who manage to scrape a passing grade continue to ditch these subjects early. And the merits of making low-performing pupils sit endless retakes are doubtful. Sam Sims of National Numeracy, a charity, says the practice demoralises adolescents for whom standard schooling has already failed.
>Meanwhile adult education has gone to seed. Since the days of the gremlins, grown-ups who lack basic qualifications have been offered free night classes. But the number enrolling has fallen from a high of 1.8m in 2012 to 700,000 last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank. Employers do not seem fussed. A government survey finds that only 3-5% of companies with low-qualified staff think their workers need to brush up on basic skills.
>Adults rarely discuss embarrassing deficits with friends or bosses, says Alex Stevenson of the Learning and Work Institute, another think-tank. So getting them to enrol in skills courses is hard work. Colleges struggling with tight budgets usually find there are more profitable things to do, even if the government is willing to cover course fees. These days only two-fifths of people appear to know that free help is available, reckons Mr Stevenson—and they are largely not the ones who need it.
>The government is now putting some £560m ($640m) into “Multiply”, a three-year project to boost basic numeracy. Exactly what it looks like will vary by region; local authorities have been told to create schemes that match needs in their areas, selected from a menu of ideas drawn up in Westminster. The government wants to see lessons offered in workplaces. It also wants officials to create schemes for particular groups such as parents, prisoners and would-be nurses.
>That project will have to surmount shortages of maths tutors (many of whom now earn a crust helping teenagers with their many resits). Advocates of literacy wonder why their subject is not getting more attention. And all this probably comes too late to boost England’s performance in the next international ranking of adult skills, due to be released in 2024. Prepare for another ugly surprise.
I’m a software engineer, I’m doing pretty well in my career and as part of the work I do, I’m building complex data warehousing systems and reporting for critical infrastructure.
I was talking to a friend about this particular topic recently who has an 8 y/old with maths homework that neither of us can help with. I don’t remember how to do long division, or simple pen and paper multiplication as I’ve not needed it to date.
I’m seriously thinking I’ll need to crack out the text books to refresh my basic maths skills for my 4 y/old so I can help him in future.
They told me I wouldn’t carry a calculator with me every day…
I heard that only around 35% of the UK population consider themselves to be good at maths. That’s terrible. Luckily, the other 75% can add up OK.
I lack basic numeracy skills, it’s a challenge and I’m trying to help my kid with her math homework. Luckily her dad is good at maths.
Ah english literacy my one failing. But I am self taught so can not complain too much.
There was an interesting discussion on The Infinite Monkey Cage a while back ([https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj)) about the challenges of teaching maths. We really need more people doing what they did in this episode and being honest about the challenges of mastering numbers and their relationships. I was getting my maths GCSE results at the same time as my A-Levels (third time lucky!) and it was refreshing to hear swotty brainiacs talking honestly about their own struggles with mathematical concepts, my teachers mostly left me feeling pretty worthless when I didn’t understand back in secondary school. I started teaching myself again online after I listened to the episode.
One of the problems with grade school education is that they’re teaching as if we’re still living in 1999. I’ve worked in accounting/finance for years and not once have I needed to do mental math. What IS imperative for my career progression is technology proficiency.
This may be controversial but I think anything beyond very basics maths should be elective, for students who wish to go into rigorous scientific or medical fields. For everyone else I think it’s far more important to focus on technology, basic coding, etc. We live in a completely different world now and what we teach kids, as well as uni admissions requirements, should reflect the world we ACTUALLY live in and the skills required to thrive in it.
I remember reading an article on here that the M&S boss is now offering Maths and English lessons to employees for this reason
Of course.
The government introduced a new curriculum in 2013 and it’s unteachable. It’s shit. Every last bit of it. The material is way too difficult, it’s impossible to teach within a school year, there physically aren’t enough hours and the standards are ridiculous.
I could tell you anything you want to know about the curriculum and you will be horrified.
Roman numerals, brought in in 2013, for all year groups. It’s 2022.
Tory cunts would bring Latin to state schools if they could, it’s all a cruel joke
Education is fucking appalling in this country, I can’t speak for others but it’s fucking terrible and it’s been grinding to a slow halt for years, in a further ten years you won’t believe how anxious and incapable this generation are, I just hope at some point some sort of social care dynamic is established in the UK before they’re thoroughly ruined
Given how little support, understanding or empathy there was for kids with dyscalculia when I was a kid in school, it’s no wonder. I lost interest after teachers laughed at me for the mistakes I made and got frustrated with me or told me off in front of the class for struggling. I learned enough to barely pass my GCSE and that was it.
Every English class I saw kids with dyslexia (rightly) get support and accommodation but it seems the numeracy side hasn’t caught up. When you don’t feel supported you stop trying and you let the skill fade.
The schooling system really needs to change.
It is still stuck in this idea that we all want to go do small repetitive tasks for our bosses in office buildings.
Some of us want to run our own business, become a tradesmen, be athletes etc
When I was in school (late 90s through 2012), I learnt nothing that was helpful in doing what I do today.
So many children give up on school as they don’t see why they should bother when they are so depressed about the future or don’t have a clue what they want to do or school has just burnt them out.
It needs to be a place for children to explore opportunities and learn useful things not be conditioned into working in a suit and tie office block…
Anyone who has interacted with the average British adult knows this.
It’s even funnier when you consider how easy English is to learn compared to other languages.
At my company we give everyone a maths/logic test for any job.
We really don’t care what your qualifications say – we’ve reached the point that we don’t trust them.
A majority of people in the U.K. have abysmal maths skills, don’t understand percentages, say “I am competent with Excel” then promptly display that they are absolutely useless as the only thing they can do is type in boxes and maybe sum 1 range but then have no idea what to do with it.
The “I’ve got a calculator in my pocket” brigade have no idea how to use a calculator for anything more complex than 2+2 type addition.
The bar is low and gets lower constantly….. but then somehow these same people score high grades.
Wow, I am not surprised, I guess.
But what is surprising is that the UK is the only country in the comparison that has not made any progress in the last 40 years. That is shocking.
I’m going to take any report that can’t decide if it’s talking about Britain or England with a large punch of salt.
Because we don’t really need it most of the time. And if we need basic maths done for something, we’re going to get a calculator out instead.
I forgot 99% of everything I ever learned in School because it’s all useless and will never get any real world use from me. Everything I need in life has been self-taught. All of this goes for Maths though, I feel like bad Literacy is alarming. Because being able to read and write properly is way more important than basic maths is to a person’s average life.
Considering the government didn’t seem to understand exponential growth throughout the whole pandemic I’m not sure even the adults running the country know basic numeracy.
I have never really understood this whole “I haven’t used it for years so I forgot”. You probably didn’t know it very well in the first place without the aid of notes, a teacher helping you etc. you don’t just forget things that you know well especially basic things like this article alludes to.
You don’t forget how to spell a word just because you haven’t written it for decades or forget how to ride a bike if you haven’t ridden one in years, it is all muscle memory. In order for muscle memory to kick in though you need to have learned that thing to the point of being unconsciously competent.
This seems more aimed at people who never properly grasped basic numeracy and literacy in the first place and now tell themselves they have forgotten it.
Including many in the treasury judging by this morning’s announcements…
30 seconds reading this subreddit could have told you that.
If the a’holes at school would have paid attention instead of taking the mick out of people like me, whom were attention maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t have turned out as thick as 2 short planks.
I’ve never been able to do mathematics in my head, but if I’m given a piece of paper to do it on it’s no problem and I couldn’t tell you why that is.
literacy is fine, but again i find it difficult to read something out loud cause I just don’t.. do anything like that in my daily life, spelling has always been my weakness however it’s something i’m not proud of.
Of course these illiterate people all have the vote and are easily manipulated by the media percentages and big numbers on red buses. And that’s why we ended up brexiting.
Most of this sub lack basic business knowledge too we should consider that as important as numeracy
There were always a lot of thickos in school, or people who didn’t or couldn’t take school seriously in their youth, for whatever reasons (home problems, parental problems, bullying, anti-education youth culture, bad teachers). People get really low grades in their exams and then don’t magically get the skills later, unless they go back to school again or make an effort to study on their own, but most people aren’t interested in that and it’s not easy to do, even if the interest is there. So maybe it shouldn’t be a huge shocker, even though in the past it did shock me when I started working. I calculated a colleague’s pay for her once and she said something like “I’m a woman, we aren’t good at maths” – dafuq?
I think it’s not a big deal if people are leading successful and fulfilled lives, but obviously some people are held back by it, like I knew a guy who wanted to be a teacher but needed to redo his GCSEs, but he couldn’t attend classes because he was a shift worker. And it’s probably ideal to have an educated populace and this is an indicator of that, but also it’s important to have a public that can comprehend information so they can have some chance of analysing it and making more informed decisions – although I can see how an educated population can bring its own problems for those with power and for society too, like being harder to pull the wool over the eyes of and being more likely to feel dissatisfied and depressed while doing unintellectual jobs.
I’m curious to know how they assessed the skills. It says people have skills that aren’t even on par with primary school kids, so I guess that’s KS2? Not sure what level the functional skills tests are that they do in the job centre etc, but I know someone with an A in A-level maths who failed their maths test lol, but I’m sure they have the maths and English skills needed to navigate day to day life and generally aren’t hindered by any lack of numeracy or literacy skills.
Not that I’m one to defend the education system, but it bears repeating for those not aware that some of the people we live alongside in society were able to finish education aged 15 and swear to never open a book again if they didn’t have a good time at school – and they have just as much of a vote & voice as you.
I think it really doesn’t help that there’s a strong anti-intellectual streak in British society. People are more often denigrated than celebrated for knowledge-based skills and achievements.
The amount of emails I get in my job from colleagues in various positions of seniority that have awful spelling is alarming. What’s worse is I’m in IT and occasionally assist with bulk communications being sent out and quite often have to send the copy back to the comms team to question some sort of basic spelling/grammatical error…
People are focussing on numeracy but I think the basic lack of literacy is arguably worse. Almost all jobs now involve a ton of emailing and being able to succinctly get your point across in written English is such a vital skill
Doesn’t surprise me when a lot of people “brought it” from the shop, or even worse are trying to buy a Chester draws on market place