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Home > All site sections > HR blogs and comment > HR blogs > Specialists' blog

Counting the cost of poor mental arithmetic

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Iain Mackinnon

18 May 2011 | 12:22

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Now’s the time for employers to have their say on whether exams for the 3Rs are up to the job, says Iain Mackinnon

Do GCSE Maths and English do what you want them to do? Not in the sense of enabling you to separate job applicants into sheep and goats (those with, and without, the relevant GCSEs) but do they teach the skills which you, as an employer, want taught?

I ask because Michael Gove has now responded formally to Alison Wolf’s report on vocational education, and the centre-piece of his response is this commitment: the Government will “ensure all young people study maths and English to age 18 until they get a good qualification in those subjects. Ideally this will be a C or better at GCSE but high-quality alternatives will be identified following a consultation this summer”.

Because they are so vital as the foundations for working life, young people will be expected to keep on with their English and Maths until they get their GCSEs – or some serious alternative created after a consultation. You’re going to be asked what you think.

I recall a conversation with an employer who valued Maths very highly indeed, so much so that he rejected 299 out of every 300 applicants because their maths fell below his standards. I asked whether he found Maths GCSE a useful yardstick. He could not have been more scathing: “useless!” (There was another word before “useless”, which I’m afraid you’ll have to guess). This chap employed stevedores driving cranes in one of our major ports, and he needed his people to be able to calculate the breaking strain on a rope, instantly. Get it wrong, the rope snaps, and the container that’s just been dropped squashes the guy in the hold. What this employer wanted – and the GCSE didn’t deliver, in his judgement – was fast, accurate, mental arithmetic.

It’s an extreme example, I know. But if you think Maths and English GCSE don’t do what you want them to do, you won’t find a better time to comment

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