Category: Speeches

The speech made by Liz Truss, the then Education Minister, on 18 January 2013.

Introduction

2012 marked the centenary of the birth of one of this country’s great heroes – Alan Turing. Through his groundbreaking work in computing and computer science, cryptography, artificial intelligence and, perhaps most importantly of all, the mathematical theory of computability – Alan Turing shaped the world we live in today and continues to shape our unfurling future.

Less than a century on, we are all, more than we even realise, Turing’s heirs.

Language and logic

We live in a world governed and ruled by maths. Algorithms are woven into the architecture of our lives, directing the cars through our streets and the planes through our skies; bringing shopping to the door and the world to our desks.

Whatever subject and job you do, it is there.

Just over 50 years ago, the scientist and novelist CP Snow claimed that science and the humanities had become ‘two cultures’ – divided, alienated and mutually suspicious. A famous squabble with literary critic FR Leavis, who contemptuously described Snow as ‘intellectually as undistinguished as it is possible to be’, only seemed to confirm his theory.

What I think is so interesting, half a century on, the Cold War between science and art is over. Last summer’s Olympics opening ceremony seamlessly combined Isambard Kingdom Brunel and William Shakespeare, Tim Berners-Lee and Mary Poppins.

Our greatest living artists like David Hockney and Alison Lapper have found new inspiration and impetus by creating work on the iPhone and iPad and through digital imaging. Historians like Niall Ferguson analyse sweeping historical trends and the march of human progress through statistics, technological innovation and the growth of so-called ‘killer apps’.

In other words, understanding the language and logic and structure of mathematics is no longer a narrow discipline practiced by removed specialists. It is universal.

That is why we are so determined to make sure that the next generation is fluent in the language of maths, the universal language of the modern world. The increasing earnings premium for maths at A Level, degree level and beyond shows its draw.

We are changing our curriculum to reflect the demands of the 21st century.

Students will be starting languages at age 7 – because language proficiency is increasingly important in a more open world.

Children will also be learning programming at primary school so they can ‘speak computer’ as well as using it.

But the growing importance of maths shows we need to do more to make sure children speak that language too. That is why we are redesigning the primary maths curriculum to focus on mastery and fluency of the vital building block of mathematics, which is arithmetic.

Last year, the Secretary of State set out his ambition that within a decade the vast majority of young people will be studying maths right through to 18.

No longer can these skills be considered a minority pursuit – maths has gone mass market.

We are not there yet

We know that is the aspiration, unfortunately we are not there yet.

According to the Nuffield Foundation, we have the smallest proportion of 16- to 18-year-olds studying maths of any of the 24 countries examined: far less than nations like France, the US, Ireland, New Zealand, Russia, Australia, Estonia, Spain, Germany or China. 85 per cent of Japanese students are studying the equivalent of A Level maths – in England it’s just 12 per cent of young people.

New data from TIMSS 2011 shows that England’s maths performance has not improved since 2007 either at age 10 or at age 14. Put together with PISA 2009 data, it does show a worrying lack of progress – while the East Asian nations are extending their lead.

When we delve into the detail of these studies it’s even more worrying. The gap at age 10 between our strongest and weakest maths performers is one of the widest in TIMSS – with fewer of our pupils overall reaching the very highest levels. A growing number of our students don’t even reach the lowest benchmark on that scale – 12 per cent at age 14, three times as many pupils falling behind in this country as in the US.

OECD maths results in PISA 2009 also showed that the gap in achievement between English boys and girls was one of the widest in the world – with boys 20 points ahead, equivalent to around half a year of formal schooling.

Girls are less likely than boys to study maths beyond 16 and less confident about their ability overall. Independent research has found that ‘girls rate their own ability (in maths) as lower than that of boys as early as the first year of primary school, even when their actual performance does not differ from that of boys’.

Lower income pupils are also falling behind, particularly in maths. At 16, the attainment gap between children on free school meals and the rest of the population is wider in maths than in English, history, or the sciences. Only 46 per cent of pupils on free school meals achieve GCSE maths at A* to C, compared with 70 per cent of the rest of the population.

At A Level, comprehensive students are half as likely to study maths as their colleagues at independent or grammar school – whereas they are equally likely to study history or English.

Why is this?

When considering this problem it’s quite hard to pin down exactly why there are greater issues in maths than other subjects. There are deep seated cultural issues with maths in this country which need to be challenged – in our culture where, inexplicably, it is completely acceptable for adults and children to shrug their shoulders and say, laughing, ‘I’m rubbish at maths’. It would be unthinkable for anyone to say, almost proudly, ‘I can’t read’, or ‘I’ve never quite got to grips with writing’.

But as well as a cultural block – there are also problems with the level of attainment and the architecture of our system which have not helped maths to flourish.

On Monday, Nuffield followed up their blockbuster Outliers study with another major report with King’s College London, examining universal participation in post-16 maths.

It found that one of the most important factors in determining whether or not young people continue with maths after 16 is prior attainment. In other words, if we get maths teaching right from the start of primary right through to GCSE, more young people will finish GCSE feeling confident and comfortable in maths – and participation after 16 will naturally increase.

Strengthening the primary curriculum

A new primary curriculum will focus on mastering essential arithmetic at an early stage. This doesn’t mean a pick and mix approach, but a deeper, richer, stronger curriculum with a new emphasis on problem-solving, practice and fluency, ensuring that children are properly prepared for secondary school and beyond.

To ensure that children build up their mathematical fluency and become comfortable with basic calculations, we’re removing calculators from primary tests from 2014. Rather than requiring children to know the 10 times table by the end of year 6, pupils will learn all of their multiplication (including the 12 times tables) earlier, by the end of year 4.

And, crucially, we are putting arithmetic, numbers, fractions, decimals and percentages at the heart of our new curriculum.

These essential skills are the bedrock of the subject, vital for almost every higher-level specialism and essential if children are to feel confident and capable as they move on to secondary school. The countries which regularly out-perform us in international tests like TIMSS or PISA – East Asian nations, in particular – make sure that every pupil masters arithmetic and number, gaining a rock-solid grasp of these fundamental mathematical skills before moving on to more advanced topics.

But as last year’s TIMSS results showed only too clearly, where East Asian nations perform extremely well in arithmetic, our children do relatively poorly. By contrast, English children achieve comparatively high marks in data at an earlier age, than in high performing nations.

The issue is that data does not provide such a solid foundation for further study as arithmetic. No wonder, therefore, that English pupils perform relatively poorly at age 14 in PISA tests on the topics at the core of the curriculum, algebra and geometry – both heavily dependent on arithmetic.

Our reforms to the curriculum will enable our country to be on a par with the highest-performing nations. That means shifting the balance away from data and towards arithmetic, so that children become secure and confident in the basics of the subject when they leave primary school. There is a role for statistics when these fundamentals have been mastered.

Practice makes perfect

A vital part of that mastery is practice.

The truth is that high-quality, productive practice is essential in learning any skill whether penalty shootouts or piano playing, manipulating Spanish verbs or sine and cosine. As the legendary golfer Gary Player said, ‘the more I practice, the luckier I get’.

No one can predict what will make the ‘light bulb’ ping above a child’s head – converting fragile insight into secure, confident understanding. So pupils need plenty of opportunities to practise a technique in a wide variety of contexts, working through increasingly demanding problems on their own and with a teacher.

Research by King’s College has shown that the number of young people in this country with a poor grasp of basic calculation has more than doubled over the last 30 years. 15 per cent of children today cannot successfully solve even the most basic problems – questions involving simple arithmetic like doubling, trebling and halving – compared with just seven per cent in the mid-1970s.

I think this question of practice is one of the most important differences between top-performing countries and here. As well as focusing on arithmetic and number, pupils in South East Asia spend more time than English children on high-quality, productive practice – and end up with deeper, stronger mathematical understanding.

Teaching the most efficient calculation methods

Another essential reform to the primary curriculum is to ensure that all pupils are taught efficient calculation methods – rather than spending too much time on confusing, time-consuming methods like chunking and gridding.

These tortured techniques have been the trend in recent years. Instead of simple, efficient columnar long multiplication and division, children have been taught to rely on intermediate methods, splitting numbers into smaller chunks and parts, working them out separately and repeatedly adding numbers together, or taking them away.

Supporters of these methods say that they are useful in helping children to understand the concept behind the calculation. But all these methods are slow and simplistic, only effective on the most basic sums. Children cannot progress to more advanced maths without learning the efficient, written methods; and the shift between the two leaves children more confused than ever.

Parents are often utterly baffled, and complain that they have no idea how to help children with their homework – even one of my colleagues with a maths degree; while education experts from other countries are even more befuddled, unable to fathom why the British education system has adopted an untried method for teaching maths, which holds back the most able and confuses everyone else.

High-performing jurisdictions like Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong leave out gridding or chunking from their textbooks entirely – and the best schools in this country don’t use them either. Ofsted research looking at 20 high-achieving primary schools found that the maths teachers avoided chunking because, as they put it, it confused pupils, particularly the low attainers. The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics agrees – developing new guidance which makes it clear that children should learn efficient calculation methods as quickly as possible, with no encouragement for chunking or gridding whatsoever.

So the new National Curriculum will specify that children should learn efficient calculation methods like columnar addition and subtraction and short and long multiplication; and KS2 tests will be designed to reward pupils whose working shows they have used the efficient methods.

In other words, if children get the right answer, they get the marks. If they get the wrong answer, but their working shows that they were using the most efficient methods, they will still be rewarded.

Qualifications at 16

Fixing weaknesses in the curriculum will be vital in driving up standards in the classroom. But we also need to make sure that assessment and qualifications are right.

In maths, one of the most serious problems in recent years has been the steep rise in the number of schools choosing to enter pupils for maths GCSE early. In 2005, 1 per cent of pupils took maths GCSE early. In 2010, the figure had leaped to 27 per cent.

Of course, there will always be a small number of high-fliers who take exams early as part of a planned programme of accelerated progression.

But disturbingly, many schools seem to be choosing to enter pupils of all abilities early as a way of performing well in league tables – choosing to ‘bank’ a C grade at age 13 or 14, even if the child could have achieved an A or A* at age 16. Department for Education research has shown that these candidates achieve worse grades overall than those who sit the exam at the normal time, even after re-sits are taken into account.

We are talking to Ofsted about how to tackle this problem and will also consider it in the imminent accountability review. In every case, and every school, the best interests of pupils should and must come first.

This is particularly worrying because attainment at 16 is very closely linked to whether young people go on to study maths at A Level or beyond. By entering pupils early, schools are effectively limiting pupils’ achievements and ending their maths careers five years early.

The new maths core at 16-19

All the evidence from international tests and league tables suggests that high performing countries put core academic subjects at the centre of their curriculum for longer than we do in this country. Nowhere is this more striking than in 16-18 maths.

The introduction of Curriculum 2000 sent the numbers studying maths plummeting – from 56,000 before the introduction of it to 44,000 afterwards. More than a decade on, I’m delighted that the number of young people taking maths A Level is increasing – indeed, maths and further maths exam entries have risen 50 per cent since 2000 – and degree entries are also rising fast.

But there’s still much further to go – and we’ll be saying more about our plans in the next few months.

Last year we announced that maths will be compulsory for students up to the age of 19 who have not achieved a C at GCSE – a decision supported by this week’s Nuffield report.

That doesn’t mean that young people who have achieved a C or above at GCSE should wave maths goodbye. On the contrary, we want many more students to study maths after 16 – whether they are doing arts or sciences in the rest of their options.

Countries with higher maths uptake between 16 and 18 tend to offer mid-level qualifications at this age – what I describe as core maths – effectively as an alternative to A Level. The Nuffield report found that the availability of appropriate qualifications in advanced mathematics is absolutely ‘crucial to increasing participation’.

We are keen to see a range of approved qualifications that can provide rigorous, respected mathematical options for 16- to 19-year-olds who have achieved at least C at GCSE. For example, these could be a subset of a more traditional maths course or a statistics and probability qualification – like one which has increased take-up in New Zealand.

We are also funding maths in education and industry to work with Professor Tim Gowers, professor at the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge University and Fields Medallist, devising a whole new problem-solving course. The course will be based on considering intriguing, real-life questions using mathematical rules and techniques – learning to think about the world in a mathematical way.

It will give young people studying literature an insight into logic, aspiring politicians an understanding of probability – and show thousands of young people how mathematical rules shape and govern our world.

Tim Gowers wrote a brilliant explanation of his approach on his blog, and later in ‘Should Alice Marry Bob?’ in the Spectator, and I urge you to read them if you haven’t already. They really illustrate a new way of looking at maths. If those early outlines are anything to go by, this course will appeal to students of all disciplines.

What I’m doing at the moment is talking to higher education and working with organisations like the Advisory Committee for Mathematics Education to look at other possibilities for new post-16 courses. The critical point is that these qualifications must be respected by higher education and employers.

We are also working to improve existing 16-19 maths courses and stretch top students. At the moment, even the brightest 18-year-olds at this country’s top universities are struggling. Academics warn that too many students are arriving to study maths or mathematics-related degrees without the basic mastery they need – which inevitably means that they struggle with the demands of a university course.

Cambridge University’s maths department is developing a rigorous, top-quality curriculum and teaching materials for advanced maths, focusing on key mathematical ideas such as complex numbers and trigonometry. Cambridge is a world-leader, with some of the best mathematicians in the world – and this work will give many more students the deep knowledge and skills needed for further study or employment.

Led by Cambridge professors and the University’s Millennium Mathematics Project, the programme will provide free online materials for students and teachers, helping them to explore connections between different areas of mathematics and to develop key mathematical skills and clarity of thought.

We have also expanded the work of the Further Mathematics Support Programme delivered by MEI. The programme is a huge success story, largely responsible for further maths becoming the fastest-growing A level subject last year. So we have increased its funding, helping to support every schools and college that wants to offer its pupils further maths.

In 2011, the Chancellor announced funding for specialist maths Free Schools for 16- to 18-year-olds, supported by strong university mathematics departments and academics, and giving our most talented young mathematicians the best possible preparation for university.

And I’m delighted that King’s College London is planning to open the first in September 2014 – giving promising 16- to 18-year-olds the benefit of their inspirational teaching and global reputation.

Supporting current teachers

The quality and skills of the workforce will be vital in driving up standards – and all of these schemes have excellent professional development and comprehensive training and teaching resources at their heart.

We are continuing to fund high-quality CPD for primary, secondary and post-16 teachers through the National Centre for the Excellence in the teaching of mathematics. And we are encouraging CPD providers to learn from what we already know does and doesn’t work – for example, ensuring that great textbooks and enrichment material (from Tony Gardiner’s books on maths to the world-renowned Russian textbooks) become more widely known and used.

I can also announce today that we are funding Imperial College to develop and pilot a one year course for teachers of A level mathematics to improve their factual mathematical knowledge, confidence and fluency. Like Cambridge, Imperial College is a world leader, with a global reputation. Its experience will improve the quality of advanced maths teaching in schools and colleges, and the skills of students entering university.

And recruiting higher calibre candidates

For new teaching recruits in every subject, we have increased the level of numeracy required – ensuring that every new teacher is able to pass a test equivalent to a B grade at GCSE maths.

We’ve introduced prestigious £20,000 scholarships for aspiring maths teachers, led by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the London Mathematical Society and the Royal Statistical Society for Maths.

And although most primary ITT courses prepare generalist teachers who teach across the curriculum, we want primary schools to have the opportunity to employ maths specialists.

So the first trainees will be starting our new primary maths specialist programme in September this year – and an extra £2000 bursary for those with at least a B in A level maths will help to attract the brightest and best into our primary schools.

Conclusion

This country can be proud of our mathematical heritage. From Sir Isaac Newton to Charles Babbage to Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing – English mathematicians have shaped the world we live in and will shape the future still to come.

But what was once the domain of the exceptionally gifted has become the currency of how we live. Maths is the universal language of the modern world – and across every career and every discipline, its importance will only grow.

That is why I want to see more girls taking maths, more comprehensive schools offering advanced maths and more students across the whole country studying and enjoying this great subject.

Because unless we make maths universal, our young people will never be able to reach their full potential. And, critically, we will fail to compete against those countries where maths is considered a birthright – the Asian nations beating us in the international league tables and pulling further ahead every year.

By redesigning the curriculum and assessment, improving the standard of teaching and expanding the range of qualifications, we can make sure that every young person in the country – male or female, rich or poor, dreaming artist or single-minded scientist – masters maths early, and studies it for longer.

Because the only way to create the next generation of Turings and Lovelaces is to make fluency in the universal language of maths our top priority.

Thank you.

The speech made by Liz Truss, the then Education Minister, on 11 December 2012.

For some the arrival of Christmas is signalled by a party or a tree. For me the arrival of 3 freshly minted tomes – PIRLS, TIMSS and TIMSS marked the beginning of the festive season. For these test results are truly a gift that can bring great pleasure and insight.

And these tests are not just of interest to those of us data fiends. As the Prime Minister outlined in his conference speech Britain is in a global race. Sink or swim. Do or decline.

There are many ways to compete – by having the world’s most competitive tax and regulatory regime, by having sweated every piece of infrastructure and every asset; by making sure that every penny of public money is value for money.

These are all great things. Yet nothing is more important than the skills base. A nation’s future prospects increasingly depend on the cognitive skills of its citizens. The link between student scores in international tests and real GDP growth rates per head is growing stronger; doubling between 1960 to 1980 and 1980 to 2000.

As globalisation increases the pool of talent for top jobs, advances in technology and increasing mechanisation are squeezing out the mid-level jobs that require mid-level skills. The result is an hourglass economy, polarising jobs into two extremes – low-skilled work and senior managerial, professional jobs. The global return on skills – the premium earned by the highly educated – will only rise in the years to come. Over the next decade, the biggest increases in employment in this country are expected to be in higher-level occupations – at least 2 million jobs.

This should mark the opportunity for a great new wave of social mobility. Much as the increase in professional and managerial jobs in the 1950s and 1960s propelled many into the middle class – so these new jobs should be providing a new ladder up and a new route in for thousands.

But are we producing the skilled workforce to take these places? According to the OECD this September, 25% of UK workers only have low skills compared to 14% in Germany and 11% in Canada.

In maths, which commands the highest premium at A level, degree and post -grad, we are trailing the field. England has the smallest proportion of 16- to 18-year-olds studying maths of any of the 24 countries measured. In Japan, 85% of students are studying the equivalent of A level maths – compared to just 12 per cent of young people in England.

And behind our showing in 2009 PISA of 25th for reading lies a very large distribution between the best and worst performers- a trend that’s much more pronounced in England than in other countries. In the past, and still today, this country has excelled at educating a small minority of its children to the very highest level. Our leading schools are already doing what the best systems in the world are doing and reaping the rewards.

This has to be our ambition.

Which is why the results released today from the international PIRLS and TIMSS studies are so important. Comparing ourselves to other countries is vital. It shows our strengths and our weaknesses. The pace of the race is such that we cannot afford to only learn from our own successes and failures – we must also learn from others and fast.

PIRLS and TIMSS, along with PISA, are the main methods for benchmarking our performance internationally. There are differences between the three studies; the most obvious being the age at which they test pupils: age 10 for PIRLS; ages 10 and 14 for TIMSS; and age 15 to16 for PISA.

They also test different things. TIMSS tests knowledge found in the curricula of participating countries. For example, in maths it tests number, algebra, geometry and data. TIMSS also assesses the cognitive skills of knowing, applying and reasoning.

PISA, on the other hand, assesses pupils on knowledge and skills they need to take a full and active part in modern society.

Today I will give an initial view of the PIRLS and TIMSS results. There is much devil in the detail and we will of course comment further when more analysis has been completed.

After discussing today’s results I will also talk more broadly about what international studies tell us about the curriculum and what lessons we are learning that we are putting into practice. And how we can learn even more.

This year’s PIRLS results show an improvement in the reading performance of 10-year-olds eclipsing the 2006 score and almost back to levels of 2001. The scaled score is 552, above the average of 500 and putting us at 11 out of 45. Our top performers compare with the best in the world.

More children are reading for fun, which, with its link with higher average achievement, is good news. Over half of our pupils said they read for half an hour or more every day out of school in this year’s PIRLS findings – a 4% increase since 2006. Fewer children reported that they “never or almost never” read for fun – a 15% drop since 2006.

But we have a long tail. 5% of our 10-year-olds don’t reach the lowest level of performance in PIRLS compared to one per cent in Hong Kong and 2% in the US. This is a long-term problem going back to 2001 and most probably long before. Our lowest performers are stuck at a very basic level, only able to find and reproduce information with explicit guidance.

The overall improvement in results suggest that wider use of phonics, starting with Jim Rose’s review in 2006 under the last government, pressed by my colleague Nick Gibb, has had an impact. Long-term research projects in the UK and abroad have confirmed that the early and effective use of systematic synthetic phonics can all but eliminate illiteracy.

We have built on this as a government introducing the phonics check for the first time this year – 235,000 6-year-olds were identified this year as needing additional help. Early identification of those struggling to obtain the basics is vital to bringing up overall performance and trying to eliminate much of the tail.

We are also introducing a new grammar, spelling and punctuation test next year and revising the English primary curriculum.

Maths performance in TIMSS has not improved since 2006 either at age 10 – where we are 9th out of 50 or at age 14, where we are 10th out of 42. We’re on a similar level to the US. In contrast, East Asian nations are extending their lead. Put together with PISA results, this shows a worrying lack of progress over time at school.

In maths, 10-year-olds performed below England’s average score in number and above England’s score in data. Number – essentially arithmetic, subtraction, addition multiplication and division – is where the high-performing countries generally do well. Fluency in arithmetic provides a solid basis for later study in areas from algebra to statistics.

Data, interpreting charts and diagrams, is a larger part of our curriculum earlier than it is in other countries and does not form as strong a basis for later study.

At 14, students perform relatively worse in algebra and geometry compared to the top performers, again the elements that should be the core of the curriculum at that age.

These findings are borne out by a study published by King’s College London in September, which concluded that pupils’ maths performance hadn’t risen since the 1970s and that current students’ understanding in algebra, ratio and fractions was relatively weak.

In our reforms to the curriculum we’re readjusting the balance to make sure the basics are secure first, in line with high-performing jurisdictions. At primary level, this will mean increased focus on arithmetic and taking it off data; requiring not only that pupils learn things like their tables earlier – at year 4 instead of year 6 – but also that they develop structured arithmetic, developing the foundations for algebra. We’re also removing calculators from primary tests by 2014 to ensure students build up their fluency.

At secondary there will be greater emphasis on algebra, geometry and more complex problem solving. Compared with other TIMSS participants, teaching time for mathematics in England was relatively high in Year 5, but relatively low in Year 9. TIMSS also found that we spend less time teaching maths at 14 – 116 hours a year compared to 166 hours in Chinese Taipei and 157 hours in the US.

TIMSS science results show a drop in performance. England’s mean score at age 10 has fallen from 542 to 529 between 2007 and 2011 and we’ve dropped from seventh out of 36 countries in the rankings to 15th out of 50. This represents not just a relative but an absolute fall in performance. The decision to drop the Key Stage 2 tests, in 2010, under the last government, appears to have had an impact.

There has been little change in our performance in science at 14 – we now come in at 9th out of 42 countries compared to 5th out of 45 in 2007.

We spend less time teaching science than many other countries. And half of our 10-year-olds were taught by teachers who had no specialist training in the subject compared to only a third of pupils in Chinese Taipei.

None of this is surprising when you consider the declining levels of science take-up at school, resulting in fewer teachers in the pipeline with a science background. This point demonstrates the knock-on effect poor curriculum breadth later in school can have on future teacher confidence in critical subjects like science and mathematics.

Which brings me to the chart and the broader point I wanted to make about our curriculum reforms. This chart is a visual representation of the relatively short lived nature of our core. All of the evidence suggests that high performing countries put core academic subjects at the centre of their curriculum for longer that we do. This means the study of a broad range of subjects including sciences, humanities and languages until 16. Many countries start a foreign language much earlier than we do. And in mathematics we are an outlier by not having a large number of students studying it from 16-18.

In recent years the trend in England has been towards fragmentation, to including even less in the core. The requirement for foreign languages was removed in 2004. There was a drop in numbers studying single sciences. Curriculum 2000 saw a disastrous drop off in the numbers of 16- to18-year-olds taking maths.

Meanwhile others were learning the lessons from international test results. That a strong core for all pupils provided the platform they needed for success. After doing badly in PISA in 2001 – the so-called PISA shock – Germany decided to increase the core of vocational and academic subjects that all pupils had to study, making maths and science subjects compulsory throughout all levels of schooling. A decade on, Germany had become one of PISA’s fastest-improvers – with particular success in closing the achievement gap between children from rich and poor backgrounds.

Similarly, after a damning set of PISA results in reading, Poland got more children studying core subjects. It improved its performance in PISA reading by more than 20 score points and reduced the proportion of lower-performing pupils from 23 per cent in 2000 to 15 per cent in 2009.

So what are we doing to learn from these examples?

Firstly we believe languages must be a central part of the school curriculum. Currently, one in 10 state primary schools offers no language lessons at all, according to most recent official figures.

It’s the reason we’re proposing to make foreign languages compulsory for children from the age of seven in all primary schools.

The response from parents and teachers has been hugely positive with 91 per cent of respondents in favour.

Secondly we are clear that the expectation should be a broad academic core until 16 – taking up 70% of curriculum as it does in most countries. We introduced the English Baccalaureate measure in 2010. In 2010, just under a quarter (22%) of GCSE pupils were entered for the EBacc subjects; this year, almost half of Year 10 pupils are studying these subjects.

The number of pupils taking GCSE triple science has gone up from just under 95,000 in 2010 to just over 130,000 in 2012. At A level, the numbers taking all three sciences have also increased.

In 2011, more than half of secondary schools reported that most of their pupils were studying a language in Year 10, up almost 15 per cent from 2010.

These changes will be cemented with the new Key Stage 4 qualifications from 2015 – English Baccalaureate Certificates in English, maths, the sciences, history or geography and a foreign language. Of course, we expect pupils to do a wider ranger of subjects, including culturally-enriching activities such as music, art, drama and design.

Thirdly we are working to improve the take-up of maths to 18. Before the summer, we announced that maths will be compulsory for students up to the age of 19 if they haven’t achieved a good grade at GCSE.

But we also want to increase the uptake of maths for those who have got a GCSE in the subject. We are therefore looking at mid-level qualifications that will fill the gap between GCSE and A-Level. These mid-level qualifications are a feature of many countries who have a much higher uptake of maths.

That’s we have asked Professor Tim Gowers, one of our field medalists, to work with MEI to devise curriculum which will appeal to new students – especially those who currently choose not to continue maths beyond 16. It’s based on solving interesting problems, logic and estimation. If you want to find out more he has written an article, “Should Alice marry Bob?” in The Spectator. We are also looking at other options for new qualifications for this age group.

Throughout our reforms, we will be looking at the international data, as many other are. Australia, for example, has made a top five place in PISA a national educational goal.

Regions in countries such as the US and Canada are now choosing to enter international tests as stand-alone entities.

Florida is one such region. Many of their reforms echo ours – more accountability for schools and teachers, more choice for pupils and parents. Measures such as an A to F grading system for schools on core subjects; reading, writing, maths and science. A pay system for teachers based on performance.

Florida’s decision, and those of other states like Massachusetts, to benchmark themselves against the world’s best shows an inspiring level of ambition for their children, an unwavering determination to do better.

Forward-thinking education authorities in England, like Essex, are taking a similar approach and proposing to benchmark themselves internationally.

I’m hugely supportive of this – and can reveal today that we’re considering entering the 2015 PISA tests not just as England, but also as separate regions. This would mean more than twice as many schools as present taking part in the tests. So, the North East could see how it’s faring against the Netherlands. The South West able to potentially see how its schools are doing in relation to Singapore. And Boris will be able to compare London to New York or Berlin.

Of course, these reforms take time. The results from Germany’s reforms enacted in the early 2000s started emerging in PISA 2009. The Secretary of State gave the timeframe of a decade for reforms to take full effect. But the experience of Germany, Poland and many others shows just what can be achieved when a country learns the lessons of international evidence and reforms accordingly. We have already shown that our top performing schools and students can compete with the best in the world in reading. If we can improve the performance of the weakest and spread our efforts to maths and science, we are perfectly capable of moving from a middling position in the rankings to a world beater.

Thank you.

The speech made by Liz Truss, the then Education Minister, on 4 December 2012.

Thanks, Anand (Shukla, Chief Executive, Daycare Trust), I’m very glad to be here.

There has been a lot of debate about the childcare system recently. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the Daycare Trust, which has championed the importance of childcare for so long. I very much value your input and look forward to working with you in the months to come.

A few weeks ago, I went to an early years seminar hosted by Frank Field, where academic experts presented a compelling chart. It showed that, in England, much more so than in other high-performing countries, major educational gaps open up not at 16 or even at 11, but by the age of five.

There can surely be no clearer illustration of why early education matters so much.

Why we must do much more to take advantage of this terrific opportunity, before they start school, when young minds are so open to learning and development. To give all children, especially those from low-income families, a good start that will help them fulfil their potential over a lifetime.

Recent progress

Like you, my ambition is for our childcare system to be the best in the world. To be high quality, affordable and to offer parents choice.

There’s been some good progress in recent years.

We’ve just announced that we’re providing local authorities with more than half a billion pounds next year to implement the early education programme for two-year-olds from lower-income families. A record 96 per cent of three- and four-year-olds are already benefitting from this programme, with 88 per cent of parents saying they’re satisfied.

Quality and professionalism is improving in the sector, with Ofsted’s inspection regime one of our system’s great strengths. As of last week, parents and providers will be able to see how many good and outstanding providers there are in each local area through a new online tool on Ofsted’s website.

And as you know, we’ve commissioned a number of childcare reviews. We’ll be responding to Professor Nutbrown’s valuable recommendations about strengthening the qualifications and skills of the workforce shortly.

There’s also the commission on childcare which I’m leading with Steve Webb from the Department of Work and Pensions, which will also report soon.

Problems with the current system

Now, overall, we’re spending more than ever on early years and childcare – around £5 billion a year, with funding set to rise by another £1 billion between now and 2015.

Yet, despite this, parents, especially mothers, are being put off work by high childcare costs.

Some families spend almost a third (27 per cent) of net family income on childcare, more than double the OECD average of 12 per cent.

The recent Resolution Foundation study lays bare the challenge faced by some middle-income families.

It found, for example, that a family with two children, in which two earners bring in a total of £44,000, could end up just £4,000 better off – because of childcare costs – than a single parent family earning £20,000 less because of childcare costs.

Just think of the tremendous talent and skills that we could tap into if it was easier for mothers to access childcare and go out to work. The gains for family incomes, for women’s career opportunities, for the wider economy could be significant.

We now have fewer mothers going to work than some countries in Europe -Eurostat figures show that 66 per cent of British mothers work, compared to 72 per cent in France, 83 per cent in Denmark and 78 per cent in the Netherlands and 70 per cent in Germany.

We’ve been overtaken in recent years by countries such as Germany where the number of working mothers has gone up by eight per cent following a national campaign to increase the availability of all-day schools.

All of this wouldn’t matter if parents didn’t want to work. But a survey by my department shows that half of mothers who aren’t working want to work, but the cost and availability of childcare is one significant barrier they face.

However, high costs aren’t the only problem. Provision is of variable quality. And too many staff are low-paid and low-skilled, meaning that the status of the workforce is not what it could be.

Need to build the workforce

So what can we do to turn this around?

The evidence from Professor Nutbrown’s review and from other childcare systems abroad suggests the answer lies with people and not processes.

High-quality staff are the key to building an efficient, high-quality system; in preparing children for school and closing the educational gap between children from rich and poor backgrounds. And in the greater flexibility their enhanced skills give employers, to operate more effectively and cut costs to parents.

Yet staff working in early years currently don’t even need a C grade in English or maths at GCSE to work in early years. As Professor Nutbrown has remarked, you can hardly expect staff to teach young children how to read, write and add up when they haven’t mastered the basics in English and maths themselves.

And too many early professionals are poorly paid – barely more the minimum wage. So, a childcare worker in England earns around half what he or she might make in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands and almost 38 per cent less than in France. It’s a similar situation with supervisors.

Staff have also been hamstrung by a bureaucratic, box-ticking approach which we’re changing by, for example, streamlining the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework- I’m pleased this has been widely welcomed.

But there is more we can do.

I want the early years profession to be a really attractive option for school leavers and graduates. There are encouraging signs that this is happening – the percentage of paid staff holding a higher level qualification rose from 65 per cent in 2007 to 79 per cent in 2011.

I want this to be an occupation that offers clear routes for career progression and a standing on a par with other professions.

This means more staff being better paid, better trained and better qualified as we move towards an ever increasingly professional workforce.

It means staff being given greater autonomy to exercise their professional judgement.

And it means nurseries making sure they’re using existing freedoms to recruit more graduates and be more flexible about staffing, while always remaining focused on the fundamentals – the safety and quality of care.

What we can learn from other countries

I want a clear focus on quality; skills, professional autonomy, and value for money as seen in childcare systems abroad.

I recently visited some nurseries in France where staff are well-qualified and take responsibility for looking after more children. I was most impressed to see children being led in well-structured activities in bright, well-organised settings. The children were enthusiastic and eager to learn. And the experience and skills of the staff shone through.

This reflects the fact that three quarters of staff in French creches and childcare services have to have an appropriate diploma, which is broadly equivalent to a year of study after A levels. Qualified teachers teach nursery classes and most nursery assistants hold diplomas. Younger children are looked after in structured group sessions led by highly qualified professionals .

Similarly, in Denmark, daycare facilities are run by highly qualified managers who have completed a three-and-a-half year course in a specialised training college. And they’re staffed with professionals who have received secondary vocational training.

Again, the workforce is so highly skilled, that they’re trusted to use their expertise to staff their settings as they deem appropriate, with with no nationally prescribed staff: child ratios in place.

It’s a system that’s clearly working well for parents, with Denmark boasting above average maternal employment rates – 71 per cent of mothers with children under three are working compared to 56 per cent in the UK.

There are, of course, differences between our system and those in France and Denmark. But running through provision in these countries is a respect for professional judgement and a belief in the importance of skilful and knowledgeable staff that we could learn from.

After all, we know, from our own experience with the Academies programme, that giving professionals greater autonomy and transparency works. By directly funding these schools and freeing headteachers to run them and recruit the best staff, academies have turned around hundreds of struggling schools and are improving their results at twice the national average. Their achievements have been recognised by Ofsted which, in turn, is now focused more tightly on the things that really matter – quality of teaching, leadership, pupil attainment and behaviour and safety.

There’s no reason why giving early years professionals similar freedoms couldn’t drive improvements in childcare.

Funding

Another key area where we’re looking to learn from other countries is funding.

We’re pumping large sums into childcare – as a share of GDP, the Government is spending twice the OECD average. It’s true that we spend less than Denmark, but our spending is comparable with France and we spend more than Germany. But providers are still struggling to stay afloat and parents are facing rising costs.

We must make our money work harder. A recent IPPR report concluded that our current system is “expensive”, “inefficient” and “confusing”. I’m keen to improve this.

We’re already making changes. You can see this in the way we’re rolling out the two-year-old programme, so that funding is more transparent and focused on the high-quality settings that research tells us provide lasting educational benefits to children.

At the moment, there are significant differences between the rates different local authorities pay for three- and four-year-olds. A National Audit Office report on the three- and four-year-old programme, published in February this year, found that wide variations in funding levels and the complexity of local funding formulae created administrative burdens for providers operating in more than one area.

We want high-quality providers to expand their businesses and bring their expertise to parts of the country where provision is currently patchy. But it’s difficult for them to offer a consistent quality of service across the country when the amount they’re paid in different areas varies so much.

I recently met childminders and nursery managers in Leeds. They were passionate and articulate about providing high-quality care and education for young children and meeting the needs of local parents. They told me that the base rate paid by some local authorities in the region for early education for three- and four-year-olds was around £3 per child per hour. Other local authorities paid as much as £5.

I want providers to be able to expand wherever there is demand, and not be held back by variability in funding rates between neighbouring authorities.

So, in introducing the two-year-old programme, we’re, firstly, providing enough money – over half a billion pounds in 2013-14 – to recruit and retain the best quality early years staff and to boost the skills of existing staff.

I have also ensured that funding for the two-year-old places will be delivered with greater transparency than ever before.

Last week, I announced individual allocations to local authorities for the two-year-old programme in 2013-14. I also confirmed the Department’s estimates for the number of children who will be eligible in each area.

This means that for the first time, local authorities, providers and parents will be able to see exactly how much has been provided to authorities for the two-year-old places.

I will let you do the maths. But if you divide the funding by the number of places, and then divide that by 570 hours, you will see just how much per hour each local authority has been given.

Nationally, this works out at an average rate of £5.09 per child per hour. This is significantly above the average market rate of £4.13 per hour as reported in the Daycare Trust’s own childcare cost survey this year.

I want local authorities to take their cue from the National Audit Office, and offer a clear and simple rate for the delivery of the two-year-old places.

Because setting a simple, sustainable funding rate is vital to give providers the confidence to become part of the programme.

Providers will know they can go anywhere in the country and be confident that a local authority has enough funds to pay for a high quality place. This is where Ofsted’s new online tool will be very useful – for providers to see where there’s good and outstanding provision and where there are gaps in the market they can fill.

Our aim is for as many children as possible to receive early education in good and outstanding settings. But for this to happen, funds need to reach the front line.

So I’m urging local authorities to make sure this funding is passed on to providers. We’ll be publishing the actual amount every local authority has passed on, on the Department’s website next year, so parents and providers will be able to compare rates across the country and hold authorities to account.

It’s also crucial that local authorities raise awareness, so that as many families as possible take up the two-year-old offer. I’ve made it clear to local authorities that in future, funding will be linked to the number of children participating, so funding will go down if we don’t achieve high levels of take-up.

Conclusion

That may sound somewhat impatient, but I’m determined to deliver improvements in early education as quickly as possible.

With your help, I want to make the system more efficient and affordable, with the emphasis firmly on quality.

Having listened carefully to the views of parents and childcare professionals, we’ll be taking forward work from Professor Nutbrown’s review and from the childcare commission in the coming weeks and months.

As part of the commission, we’re considering reducing regulation that places an unnecessary burden on providers. We’ve also been looking at
wraparound and holiday care for school-age children and have found an inspiring range of activities on offer in different schools. We will report on this soon.

I also recently visited Germany and saw first-hand how high-quality, well-planned extra-curricular activities, supervised by highly-qualified, non-teaching staff, have been integrated into schools in Berlin and are catering for children of all ages. These staff work closely with teachers to support pupils throughout the school day – which, with lessons interspersed with non-academic activities and study time, can run from half seven in the morning to four o’clock in the evening. Wrap-around care in some schools extends that offer from six in the morning until six at night. There, as here, this offers greater flexibility for working parents.

I want to see what we can learn from this.

I would also like to see all providers – nurseries, childminders and schools – to step up to the challenge so that good and outstanding settings become the norm. Lower quality providers must raise their game. High-quality providers should consider options for expanding to meet demand. I hope new providers will also come forward to offer their services.

I’m keen to work with you, the early years profession, and with parents, over the coming months, to develop a system that our children truly deserve.

For children’s life chances, which, as I said at the start, depend so much on their readiness to learn when they start school.

For parents who need to work to support their families and want to be sure their child is receiving safe, high-quality education and care that’s affordable.

And for early years professionals, who should be well-rewarded and recognised for the vital job they do, as part of an increasingly skilled workforce.

Thank you.

Selections from the interview with Liz Truss, the then Education Minister, and Nursery World Magazine, on 12 November 2012.

On her impressions of the sector

I obviously met quite a lot of people before I got the job, and it’s an area I’m interested in. I’ve got young children myself.

I think that quality has improved. We’ve seen a growing professionalism in the childcare sector as a whole. A lot of the discussions that I’ve had with providers have been that there is an issue with sustainability. Feedback that I get from parliamentary colleagues is that some providers are struggling.

We know there is also an issue with the extent to which parents can afford childcare. My broad feeling is that it is an industry that has changed, but there are a lot of issues. One of the things I’ve been doing is visiting other countries … we’re all facing similar issues. There’s a growing recognition of the real importance of early years both from the point of view of child development and from women’s/parents’ participation in the labour market.

We know we’re in a more competitive world where the quality of our education is really important to our future prospects as a country and I think that early years is rightly being recognised as a really important part of that.

What I want to do is learn from the successes and failures of others and also look at what’s best in our system. There are some very strong aspects to our system – for example, the Ofsted inspection regime.

I think there’s a lot to work with. I think there’s a great deal of interest in new ideas and innovations. It’s a very interesting time to be doing the job.

On the tensions between the needs of the child and the need to get parents into work

The reality is that parents want what is best for their children. People don’t want to go out to work not being happy that their child is being well looked after and being prepared for the future, and they want to know that the child has the best possible quality care. I think that (the two things) are completely compatible and I think they have to be because we don’t want parents to go out to work at the expense of their child’s development and education at all.

What I want to do is make sure that our system focuses on the really important things, which are the safety of the child and the quality of care that the child is receiving so that our regulatory system and our professional qualifications are focused on those two things rather than other things which don’t contribute.

I want to make things simpler and focus on what is important to parents and what is important to our country as a whole. It’s really important that children receive the best possible early education.

On working mothers

The Resolution Foundation has rightly in my view raised the issue of middle income families and second earners who face a particular squeeze in this country, and I am concerned that we have fewer mothers going out to work now than they do in France and Germany, and, if you look at the 1980s and 1990s, we had more mothers as a proportion.

That’s not to say that I want to force mothers back to work. The Department for Education has done a survey that shows that roughly 50% of mothers have chosen to stay at home and 50% would like to go out to work but the circumstances make it difficult, and one of the main issues is the cost of childcare and the availability.

On funding streams

There’s a confusing number of funding streams. The funding isn’t transparent. [That doesn’t] contribute to those two objectives of quality and safety.

At the moment in our system not enough of the £6bn spent by the government is reaching the frontline. We want as much of that money as possible to be going on high-quality provision. We want providers to have an incentive to make sure that their provision is as high quality as possible.

We’re leaking out funding. Quality costs, but we’re also spending money on things that don’t contribute to quality and that is simply a question of getting better value for the money we spend. We’ve got a problem in that some providers are struggling to stay afloat and at the same time we’re pumping quite a lot of money into the system. So the question for me is, how do we make that work better?

On the free entitlement for 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds

I think simplicity and transparency are really important – to say to providers you are going to be rewarded for hiring high-quality staff, for putting on good staff training and development, for making sure that you are following best possible child development practice. We are going to be judging, or the system is going to be judging, the quality of outcomes and the quality of engagement with the child.

On the forthcoming response to the Nutbrown review of early years and childcare education

We need to make sure that it’s not just the people in the nursery and childcare system who understand what’s happening, but also that parents understand what qualifications mean. It’s back to this point about simplicity and transparency.

I want the early years profession to be a really attractive occupation for people leaving school and for graduates. I want it to be something that people want to go into. I think it’s really important that the profession is as outward-facing as possible, and that people understand what the qualifications are and what they mean.

There [need to be] new expectations around salary levels. There is an issue with pay in particular parts of the sector. I think all these things are linked, so I want to give quite a comprehensive response about the regulatory system, and about what we’re going to do about qualifications as well.

I want to build on the Early Years Professional Status (EYPS). It’s been a positive move and I want to build on it. We’ll also be looking at Ofsted and the way Ofsted measures outcomes. That will all be addressed under our response to the Nutbrown Review.

The other aspect is increasing the level of professional discretion and professionalisation, and that means allowing, where there are not issues of quality and safety, providers more say in how they operate.

I think it’s really important that if we say to people you are a graduate leader, that we allow people to exercise that professional judgement, and that’s what parents want – high quality, trusted people who are properly regulated by Ofsted, making decisions about how they run their nursery, their childminding practice.

On lessons from abroad

If you look at countries such as France and Germany, they are managing to get very high quality. If you speak to French parents about the quality of their 0-3s care, it’s very well regarded. They are managing to get high quality and high affordability and the government funding is more evenly spread across providers. So they are managing to use that government funding better, they allow more discretion, they’ve got very strong quality measures. So my question is, how do we get to that kind of system?

I don’t think we should be defensive. Yes, a lot has been achieved, but in order to get to a new level, and we need to get to a new level both for the sake of children and their development and for the sake of parents who are struggling, we need to be flexible.

The speech made by Liz Truss, the then Education Minister, in Norfolk on 9 November 2012.

Thank you for those kind words Derek and let me also thank the National Education Trust for inviting me along today. It is a pleasure to be in Norfolk for this very important conference.

It’s no exaggeration to say this is a make or break period in the history of maths in this country.

All around us, the influence of mathematics is shaping our lives in previously unimaginable ways. From our experience of online shopping to the financial performance of investments and pensions, we live in a world entirely framed by maths.

Even in those professions not traditionally associated with mathematics, there’s now a heavy reliance on algorithms and calculations: in journalism to spot the patterns in data; in architecture to use algebra and calculus with confidence; in marketing to make sense of the enormous array of statistics the world creates every day.

That modern orientation towards deduction and logic, that appetite for maths, the appreciation of statistical analysis, technology and probability, opens up tremendous opportunities for young people in this country. But to take full advantage, we need to start exploiting mathematics as urgently as other countries might drill for oil.

In technology, the media, e-commerce, design, engineering, medicine, the environment and beyond, the openings are almost limitless for those young people who are confident with numbers and able to read across into other technologies and industries. Only last week, 17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio rose to prominence after creating an app that uses algorithms to summarise news headlines.

Success stories like Nick’s highlight the incredible opportunities that maths and formal logic can open up, and it’s why this government is so determined to restore the subject to its proper place in the curriculum.

The issue we face is one of a growing mismatch between the demand for mathematical skills in this country, and our ability to supply that demand.

For their part, maths teachers have worked – and continue to work – exceptionally hard to inspire more young people in the subject, but they operate within a desperately limiting system that often turns children off maths.

As a result, the number of gifted young mathematicians coming through the ranks in this country still lags far behind those of other areas: reflected in the fact that we haven’t produced a single Field medallist in the last 14 years, despite producing 6 in the previous 40.

Indeed, according to the Nuffield Foundation, we now have the smallest proportion of 16- to 18-year-olds studying maths of any of the 24 countries measured: well behind nations like France, Estonia, Russia, Australia, Spain, the US, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and China.

Many of these countries – like Canada where I spent a year in school – spotted the need to promote maths years ago: spurred on by lobbying from employers who wanted stretching, engaging curriculums that promoted the core essentials.

We are now playing catch-up. The support has not been there for maths teachers in this country, nor the iron will and determination to encourage more young people to take the subject after GCSE.

So, what do we need to do to sort it out? Well, first of all, I think we need to promote maths much better to children at primary age. Because it’s at this point that pupils are most likely to develop an affinity for the subject.

Take Alan Turing as an example – albeit a very gifted one. He did not stumble across maths at university, he was obsessed by it as a child: running around the garden fascinated by the mathematical patterns he saw in nature and the recurrence of sequences in plants.

Indeed, all the evidence shows that a thorough grounding in the essentials of maths from an early age directly correlates to improved results later in life. The CfBT has reported on the success that’s been enjoyed by Hungary, Finland, Russia and Japan – all of whom place great emphasis on supporting mathematical competence at primary age.

The government’s draft programme of study for mathematics is designed to recalibrate the primary curriculum and make it much stronger. Our intention is to set out the very highest expectations of primary pupils: making sure they are fully prepared for secondary school and beyond.

So, we are improving the structure of the maths curriculum by removing level descriptors: giving teachers more freedom to focus on what to teach, rather than asking them to label pupils with a level every single week or term.

And we are focussing more heavily on the importance of exploring and understanding. Asking children to select and use appropriate written algorithms and become fluent in mental arithmetic: including requiring pupils to learn their 12 times tables by the end of year 4, instead of year 6.

For too long, children have been leaving school without the necessary confidence in maths thanks to weaknesses in the curriculum. We can’t allow it to go on.

Academics at King’s College have shown us that the number of young people with a poor grasp of basic calculation has more than doubled over the last 30 years. 15 per cent of pupils today fail to achieve the most basic standards – showing they can successfully solve problems involving doubling, trebling and halving – compared with just seven per cent in the mid-70s.

Employers are not happy with this. And we are doing children no favours if we go on pretending it is ok to leave school without the mathematical agility required in the modern world.

So, I am very pleased to announce today that we are removing the use of calculators from key stage 2 tests by 2014.

Calculators can support the teaching of mathematics very effectively – it would be wrong to claim otherwise – but they are no substitute for calculations that can be carried out by a child with a pen and paper, or in their head. Particularly in a test that is designed to check whether a child has mastered the basics.

That doesn’t mean it’s not important for students to become confident users of calculators, we’re not calling for the return of the abacus at the expense of technology, but we need to get the order right.

I’m yet to meet a young person who doesn’t know how to swipe their fingers across an iPad or operate a device like a calculator, but I have met some who struggle with mathematical agility.

To progress at secondary education, children need to have a deeper understanding of what it is they are asking a calculator to do, not just a superficial appreciation of the sequences they’re inputting.

In that sense, it is no more appropriate for a child to rely on a calculator before they understand the maths behind it, than it is for them to rely on a computer’s spell check before they learn to order letters correctly.

By getting the fundamentals right at primary, we have more opportunity to encourage pupils to study maths to a high level; to move from the concrete to the abstract; and to enjoy the subject beyond GCSE.

Before the summer, we announced that the study of mathematics should be a requirement for all young people, up to the age of 19, who have not achieved a good grade at GCSE.

We are now going even further by funding the education charity ‘Mathematics in Education and Industry’ to see how we might engage more students who get a C or above in maths at GCSE, but take it no further. One of the areas they will be looking at is whether they can help teachers support young people by focussing on problem solving rather than pure theory.

In Japan, one of the top performing nations in maths, schools place a lot of emphasis on giving children a problem to solve and then encouraging them to find solutions for themselves.

The British mathematician Timothy Gowers, one of our last field medallists, has been leading thinking in the same area over the last few years: demonstrating that if you ask young people mathematical questions that are open ended, you are likely to grip their interest.

Among the conundrums Professor Gowers suggests are questions like (and I quote):

Studies have shown that British vegetarians have, on average, higher IQs than the general population. Does this show meat is bad for your brain? What other explanations might there be? How informative is an average anyway? And how large a random sample is needed if you want to be convinced that an observation is probably more than just a random fluctuation?

Or:

You are in an airport and walking from the main departure lounge to a distant gate. On the way there are several moving walkways. There is a small stone in your shoe, which is annoying enough that you decide that you must remove it.

If you want to get to the gate as quickly as possible, and if there is no danger of your annoying other passengers, is it better to remove the stone while on a moving walkway, or while on stationary ground, or does it make no difference?

Now, the great strength of this approach, as teachers here will be able to testify, is that it encourages students to think laterally about problems and make links between different mathematical concepts.

It is also tried and tested. Euclid’s treatise on geometry was essentially deductive. While in China, archaeologists have unearthed mathematical brain teasers that date back to the 2nd century BC. Maths in our classrooms should reflect this rich legacy.

The best maths schools, like Lakenham Primary in Norwich; Paston College in North Walsham; New College in Nottingham; Comberton Village College in Cambridgshire and many hundreds of others across the country, have inspiring teachers in place who bring the subject alive.

We are already looking at how similar approaches could be reflected in curriculum assessment by marking students on their ability to analyse open-ended problems and communicate their solutions.

On top of this, we are working with organisations like the Advisory Committee for Mathematics Education to look at other possibilities for new post-16 courses. And we are addressing the gap in abilities at the top end of the spectrum with the support of the Cambridge University Mathematics Programme.

As many here will know, there has been a shortage of students entering higher education with the right maths skills. Cambridge University has been one of the hardest hit by this lack of math-readiness among students. So I’m delighted they’re working with us to help develop an advanced curriculum that can give students a better grounding in key mathematical ideas like trigonometry and complex numbers.

In addition to this, it is hugely encouraging to see the work being done by heads, teachers and sponsors through the opening of schools like the Sir Isaac Newton Free School right here in Norfolk. This opens in 2013.

Rachel de Souza and David Prior have done a terrific job in making this project happen. I would like to thank them in advance for the opportunity they are giving so many young people in the region to excel in maths. In David’s words, “we need a bomb to go off in maths and science” – which I took to be a positive thing.

But of course, when that bomb does goes off, we will need the largest possible supply of excellent maths teachers in this country. And that is why we have made secondary maths a priority for recruitment into initial teacher training. Candidates with a first class degree in maths are now eligible for the very highest level of bursary: £20,000 to support them through their training.

I started by saying how we’ve struggled to keep pace with the demand for mathematics in this country. I want to finish with a word of optimism. If you look at the Asian tigers and our nearer competitors like Canada and Germany, there is a huge reluctance to be beaten in education.

They lionise maths and the teachers of maths. They use exciting textbooks and teaching materials. But if you ask anyone for examples of the very best maths teaching in the world, you will find them right here, in Norfolk, East Anglia and beyond. Schools who are promoting the fascination and depth of mathematics. It’s links to great music, art and literature.

So yes, there is a solid base to build from. We can be optimistic. But we can’t be complacent if we want to build on our tremendous mathematical legacy created by thinkers like Turing.

That is why we need to be more ambitious than any other country. I want a renaissance in maths. I want teachers to be properly appreciated and supported by a curriculum that is fit for purpose. I want them to have the freedom to inspire their pupils.

On the 100th anniversary of Turing’s birth, we are absolutely determined to make sure the ‘supreme beauty’ of maths – to quote from Bertrand Russell – is reclaimed. And to make sure this country can take advantage of the enormous opportunities that this subject is creating in the world around us.