Sunak is right that our students need financial literacy but that shouldn't mean yet more maths | Simon Jenkins

A large share of young people aged 16–24 are not in education, training, or employment, including many with degrees. Financial literacy is not being taught well enough, leaving pupils unprepared for life after school. A proposed numeracy project aims to teach children how to handle money and compare Britain’s skills with other countries. Arithmetic is presented as the core foundation for money skills, enabling understanding of percentages, proportions, and interest rates. Learners should also measure inflation, judge risk, and recognize scams and fraud. More advanced mathematics is treated as less necessary for most people, but practical study should be compulsory and integrated into schooling rather than treated as optional or beneath professional teaching.

"His proposed numeracy project aims to teach children how to handle money, a skill at which he sees Britons in the dark ages compared with Germany and elsewhere. His only obsession is to believe this requires mathematics taught to the age of 18. For the vast majority of people, numeracy begins and ends with arithmetic. I remember an army education officer saying that school maths was so useless he had to teach soldiers addition and subtraction through darts and carpentry."

"Arithmetic is indeed needed in learning how to handle money. It is the foundation on which are built percentages, proportions and rates of interest. Children should learn how to measure inflation and judge risk, how to detect a scam and a fiddle. But algebra, calculus and quadratic equations are for the birds and boffins. Where Sunak should be firm is in demanding that such study be compulsory."

"Handling money which means handling the world of work should not be an extracurricular subject, somehow beneath the dignity of professional teachers. Today's schools cannot continue in the monastic tradition of elite academies, taking pride in their detachment from the world outside their walls. GCSEs and A-levels, degrees and doctorates, are still"

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