This Telegraph article reports that young people of college and sixth-form age will be taught ‘real life’ maths, such as working out mortgage calculations, playing the stock market and running a business. 

The qualification will be studied over two years and will be worth half an A-Level. It will count towards the points required for higher education admissions. But better than all of that, it will be highly useful in the real world.

The new core maths qualification aims to increase the uptake of those that do well in Maths at GCSE but don’t want to study it further as a full A-Level. It will build on topics covered at GCSE but is less intensive than the full Maths A-Level. But it has even more relevance than that; it will teach young people about the kind of maths that they may call upon throughout their life, not just in their future careers.  Most students that begrudgingly study maths will moan, “When am I ever going to need to know about Pythagoras’ Theorem?” whilst sighing at a diagram of triangles. But with this new ‘real maths’ module, teenagers will be learning about things that will have a direct impact on them in the future.

Proposed subjects include:

·         Using different data sources to determine changes to average house prices over the course of a year and calculating the value of a mortgage loan

·         Using maths in business settings, with pupils asked to calculate costs, estimate demand and set a selling price for products to maximise profits

·         Learning about the impact that income tax rates and National Insurance contributions have on family finances

·         An introduction to foreign exchange rates, with pupils calculating loss in pounds as a percentage of the original amount paid to the cashier for the euros should they to sell them back

By studying ‘real life’ maths, students will be fully aware of how important it is to get the best exchange rate when visiting another country; it gives them an understanding of the procedure of buying a house and the costs involved; and they’ll know what to expect when receiving their first pay cheque and noticing a chunk of their salary has been given to the tax man! It may even fuel a desire to run their own business, and set them up with the know-how to become a budding entrepreneur.

Real-life maths should be top of the list when signing up for A-Level subjects. It doesn’t mean students need to have ambitions to have a career as a mathematician but it does provide them with a whole heap of information that will make their ascent into adult society a lot easier.