Examination of Witnesses (Questions 760
- 768)
MONDAY 19 APRIL 2004
PROFESSOR ADRIAN
SMITH
Q760 Paul Holmes: What about the
argument though that we are letting the academic tail wag the
dog? I remember talking to science teachers at York University
about five years ago and they were saying that the kids who were
coming in to do science with A-levels had not got enough of the
academic maths they needed and they were having to run introductory
courses for them, but all the maths teachers back at school were
saying that the maths syllabuses were far too crammed with the
stuff that the universities wanted and that is why we were putting
off the 70% of kids who at that time were not going to go to university.
Professor Smith: There is no doubt
about it: you see in the A-level system the vestiges of something
driven by university entrance when it was 6% of the population.
You say "academic" as though it is a minority interest
but it is government policy to get 50% participation in universities,
so we are not talking about minorities any more. If you look further
into my report in the area where I talk about possible future
pathways, we need to be developing more flexible routes through
school. The statistics and data handling stuff is by no means
academic. As I say, it is the stuff that is fundamental in the
workplace and it is also fundamental academically if you are doing
social sciences, economics, whatever. I think we have to loosen
up what we have at the moment, which is this rather rigid, one-size-fits-all
14-16, we all jump this hoop and we are all jumping through it
at the same time, which is nonsense. I cannot remember the number
of times I have been told in the course of this inquiry of people
who failed GCSE, who "didn't get their C", who would
probably have got a B if they had had three years. This artificial
constraining in time is something that we need fundamentally to
loosen up on and there the kinds of ideas that I was exploring
in the report gel to a large extent with the ideas coming out
of the Tomlinson report. That is the route for taking that forward.
Q761 Paul Holmes: You were saying
earlier in very rough figures that 500,000 or 600,000 pupils take
GCSE maths, 60,000 go on to A-level and about 4,000 go on to a
degree. What would the figures have been, say, 40 years ago in
the good old days?
Professor Smith: In 1989—and
I happen to remember this figure because it was 1989—I think
89,000 did A-level maths.
Q762 Paul Holmes: And how many at
degree level, do you know?
Professor Smith: I do not know
the comparable figure at that time. The degree figure might not
have been much higher. Do not forget the participation rates were
much lower then. The other thing to remember in calibrating that
number doing A-level maths is that there probably were not then
A-levels in IT, psychology, sociology, whatever. A very brazen
other way of getting more people doing core subjects post-16 is
to eliminate at A-level some of the other subjects.
Q763 Paul Holmes: Would it be true
the other way to say that it is not that we have got a crisis
in maths teaching or anything like that but that we are not running
fast enough to keep up with the ever-growing demand? It is not
that we are doing worse than the past; we are doing better, but
the demand is outstripping us?
Professor Smith: We are doing
worse in a sense because if there were something like 90,000 coming
out of the system with A-levels 15 years ago, and the numbers
are now something like 45,000, it is almost half, so we have got
a decline. During the nineties the numbers doing A-levels declined
by about 10% in absolute terms. The market requirements out there
with the growth of IT and finance industries went up by some enormous
per cent. There is a reality under that of declining supply and
increasing demand and it will get worse because what is happening
increasingly is the intrusion of more and more mathematics into
biology and medicine.
Q764 Chairman: Is there not a problem
in terms of the report that it is too sophisticated for mere mortals
like ministers to act on, that it is at a very sophisticated level
of reasoning with a lot of recommendations whereas what ministers
tend to like is a short number of bullet points that they can
go for in terms of a public policy?
Professor Smith: I thought my
recommendations were models of simplicity and lucidity.
Q765 Chairman: We have still not
come out from what you have said today with the three most important
things you would go for.
Professor Smith: Teacher supply;
re-looking at the pathways through the curriculum and the assessment
processes, and thirdly and very importantly and something we have
not much touched upon is the creation of a national infrastructure
for supporting the teachers who are out there on the ground, bringing
to them greater resource through ICT, through a national centre
for excellence in maths teaching which can roll out best practice,
harnessing the resources that are out there in universities of
undergraduate and postgraduate students. The three things are
teacher supply, radical reform of the curriculum, support infrastructure.
Chairman: Excellent; thank you. The other
lesson that we could share with you from this Committee is that
you can write the best report in the world but if you really care
about it you have got to go out and market and fight for it, so
we see a long future for your, Professor Smith, doing that.
Q766 Jonathan Shaw: Professor Smith,
you have said that your third priority is to set out this new
infrastructure and you have set that as one of your recommendations.
You are also recommending that the Government put more money into
the Advisory Committee for Mathematics. You have discussed this
with the Secretary of State. Did you leave the Department with
a spring in your step, thinking, "He understands this. He
is going to take it forward", and if you are looking in the
crystal ball where are we going in five years' time?
Professor Smith: I have not yet
broken into song and dance but a confident forward stride.
Q767 Jonathan Shaw: Looking forward
for the next five years what is the prognosis? How long is it
going to take to set up your infrastructure and start stemming
the tide of the quite alarming plummet in the number of youngsters
taking A-level to arrest what you have described in your report?
Professor Smith: If we could begin
to go out to tender and bids for the national infrastructure in
the autumn of this year and have stuff firmly in place by the
following summer, 2005, you would within two or three years begin
to get quite substantial effects. The evidence for that would
be in what happened when the national numeracy and Key Stage 3
strategies were launched. That directed, focused support and Continuing
Professional Education produced measurable results in outputs
within two or three years. It is not a short term fix. It needs
to be sustained over a long period.
Q768 Chairman: Professor Smith, can
we thank you for your attendance? We have learned a lot and we
value your evidence and your report.
Professor Smith: Can I thank you
in advance for the valuable marketing that you will be doing on
my behalf.
| 
