“Rishi Sunak wants all pupils to study maths to age 18”

Jan 4, 2023 | In the news

‘You must have been really good at maths at school’ and bet you love numbers’ I often hear. The answer is the same as my reaction to this ridiculous idea, ‘no, no, no!’ I hated maths and gave it up, along with all the sciences, as soon as I could (at 16 and 14 respectively, in my day). This is typical of most in power, in this case the PM, usually education ministers (of whom we’ve had 5 in the last year), that what they half remember as being good for them must be good for the current batch of kids. Utter nonsense. We should be encouraged to do study and thrive at what we’re good at and/or enjoy. We’re as much a country of the Beatles, Monty Python and Harry Potter as we are of the bloke who invented the internet, so need to nurture both the literate and numerate. Just making them do it won’t make them either any good at or love it more. As for me, I learned to use a calculator (not around when I did my ‘O’ levels) and to type on a computer. When I needed to.

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“The working-from-home illusion fades”

“The working-from-home illusion fades”

Are workers working from home more or less productive than those catching the 7.02am to London Bridge every day? ‘Probably sitting at home in their bleedin’ jim-jams’, said someone recently of a less-than-helpful call centre employee, the assumption being that, were they surrounded by colleagues and with a manager cracking the whip, he or she would have sorted his energy bill more efficiently.