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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.