Hey, don’t take The Voice’s word for it – the research is courtesy of liberal free-market think-tank Reform:
Labour is lagging in the league table of mathematical prowess, according to the results of the 2008 Reform maths challenge, released today. The independent think tank posed the taxing test to delegates at all three Party conferences this autumn as part of its ongoing campaign to promote rigour and excellence in maths – and the entries from attendees at Labour’s conference came out bottom in the battle of the mathematical minds.
The problems that tripped up the politicians also demonstrate the UK’s lack of capability in maths. Dr Tony Gardiner, founder of the UK maths challenge, who set the questions, explains that maths education is too focused on short-term “numeracy” at the expense of “more mathematical” problem-solving skills. He said: “What is needed is better teaching of elementary mathematics, rather than intensive, highly focused efforts directed towards a narrow interpretation of ‘numeracy’. English school mathematics now systematically trains its best pupils to assume that all problems are mindlessly trivial.” Dr Gardiner’s full commentary appears in the notes below.
The average scores for each Party conference were:
• Liberal Democrats: 83%
• Conservatives: 71%
• Non-attendees: 71%
• Labour: 65%
The five highest scoring individual entrants included John Hemming, Lib Dem MP for Birmingham Yardley.
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One Comment
The questions are actually fairly hard. So well done to Mr Hemming and the Lib Dems. However, given the content of the report, it is a little disconcerting to see no information on numbers or classes of people taking part, how they were recruited, how long they had to complete the test – and indeed how the test was administered.
On a relatively small sample one or two very good mathematicians or let’s say one John Prescott getting 0% could make all the difference.
We will all now expect a complete absence of dodgy barcharts, uncosted or badly costed policy commitments, arithmetic errors etc from the numerates of the Lib Dems – or at least we will know they are knowingly wrong.