As a professional nerd, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been asked what I think of Rishi Sunak’s enthusiasm for maths. It’s hard to know quite what to say. I agree with much of what Sunak said in his speech last month singing the praises of numeracy. Yet there is little sign of action to match the fine words.
It’s not just Sunak’s strange obsession with forcing people to learn extra maths at the age of 17, when the more pressing need is more and better maths teaching and support for younger children. It’s also the basic disconnect between rhetoric and policy. There is a long-running shortage of maths teachers in the UK, and teacher pay was cut by about 10 per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2022, with additional cuts looming. Quite how this will help Sunak achieve his goal of a more numerate UK is a mystery.
It was Shakespeare, not square roots, who gave me a moment of clarity about all this. Shakespeare as interpreted by a chatbot, that is. A couple of weeks ago, a student’s homework assignment about Twelfth Night went viral. The essay that the student handed in began, “I’m sorry, but as an AI language model, I am not able to complete this assignment. However, I can provide you with some guidance on how to approach this essay.”