Last month the OECD published its latest report on the comparative educational standards of 15 year olds in most developed countries, and some developing countries – Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009. The outcome is depressing. The UK is dropping down the league table in maths and science. In 2006 it was 25th; in 2009 it had fallen to 27th in maths. This isn’t just a case of other countries doing better, though some of them are, but absolute scores were also lower. Is this something we should worry about?
 

Governments do worry about the standard of maths. Napoleon famously said that mathematics is “intimately connected with the prosperity of the state”. In his foreword to the Cockcroft report on maths teaching in 1982, Sir Keith Joseph, Secretary of State for Education and Science, wrote, “Few subjects are as important to the future of the nation as mathematics”. Since Cockcroft, there has been Professor Adrian Smith’s report on post-14 maths, and Sir Peter Williams’s report on primary maths. And one of the first things the new Labour government did in 1997 was to create a National Numeracy Strategy. They also appointed the mathematics education specialist, Professor Celia Hoyles, to be a senior government advisor, and they created the National Centre for Excellence in Mathematics Education, which she directs.
 

What has all this activity and investment achieved? Not much, judging by international comparisons. What could be achieved? Many and varied countries do significantly better than us. Michael Gove’s favourite educational system, Sweden, does as well, or as badly, as us. Both countries are average. China’s Shanghai region entered the assessment programme for 2009; their average score is an astonishing 600 –108 points more than ours, 38 points better than their nearest competitor, Singapore, and 59 points better than the best European country, Finland.
 

Is this something we should worry about? One could ask whether, in this time of financial stringency in the educational budget, we can afford additional resources to improve the standard of maths. We could also ask whether we can afford not to invest in better maths.  
 

Another OECD report last year, The High Cost of Low Educational Performance, demonstrated that the standard of maths drives GDP growth: the standard in 1960 was a good predictor of GDP growth up to 2000; and the improvement in educational standard from 1975 to 2000 was highly correlated with improvement in GDP growth. In particular, the report looked at the potential effects of improving standards in maths. So, for example, they found that if we improved the standard of the 11% of children who failed to reach the PISA minimum level (which is not very high), to the minimum level, then the effect on GDP growth would be about 0.44%. Not much you might think, but with an average rate of GDP growth of 1.5%, this would be a massive and cumulative increase of nearly one-third.
 

The analyses the OECD carried out were based on endogenous growth models of national economies. They did not take into account directly the effects of improved standards in economic competitors.
 

Maths skills are needed at all levels. Fairly advanced maths are needed by actuaries and insurance companies, engineers and architects need to calculate stresses and probabilities, bankers need to design risk-averse investment vehicles. Decent GCSE or A-levels are needed to understand accounts and spreadsheets, for nurses and doctors to work out drug dosages based on body-weight. The PISA minimum level is needed by workers in shops, services and the factory floor to keep track of the number of jobs completed and those still to do, the value of receipts and outgoings, or the amount of change to give.
 

So what should we do? Looking at the OECD table, one might think that we can learn nothing from the highest performing countries; they are all East Asian – China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Japan – where the cultural differences are great. Other high performing countries are small and homogeneous, like Finland or Switzerland, which has been used as an argument for saying that their solutions cannot be ours. However, there are high performing countries that are culturally rather like us – New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Michael Gove should be looking at these countries for inspiration, instead of expensively promoting the Swedish model of ‘free schools’, which promises no advance on our current performance level.
 

He would also do well to read the UK government’s report on Mental Capital and Wellbeing, which provides guidelines for evidence-based strategies to help the lowest attainers. As the OECD growth models show, we cannot afford not to invest in helping them. Yes, this is definitely something we should worry about.