Rishi Sunak claims that England is out of step with the rest of the developed world by not requiring young people to continue studying maths until the age of 18 – but making his numbers add up will need large sums of money and teachers.
Previewing Sunak’s announcement, No 10 argued that England “remains one of the only countries in the world to not to require children to study some form of maths up to the age of 18”, mentioning Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Finland, Japan, Norway and the US as those that did.
But while some countries insist on children continuing with maths in some form until they leave school, some of the others cited only apply the requirement to those in particular strands of secondary education or do so only in the initial stages.
A 2017 report commissioned by the Department for Education listed Russia, Japan and Sweden as among those where all children continued taking maths, with Canada, France and Germany as having “most” children, 81-94%, enrolled. Further down came Singapore and Hong Kong, countries that rank highly in international comparisons of maths attainment.
