Compulsory maths won’t cut it without creative thinking

The Prime Minister’s first speech of 2023 laid out ambitions for a better future for Britain. Part of this includes a requirement for all pupils in England to study maths until the age of 18. It’s a plan designed to equip young people with the quantitative and statistical skills they need for the jobs of today and the future.

It’s a solid proposition, there’s no doubting the value of mathematical theory and its many applications in our daily lives and work. And, if indeed there are approximately eight million adults having the numeracy skills of primary school children, then the benefits of extra maths during adolescence certainly seem to add up.

However, in practice, simply studying maths for longer will not solve the skills shortages that organisations across every sector are experiencing. It may help tackle innumeracy, but it’s unlikely to prove a magic formula for ensuring the next generation are fully prepared for the world of work.

Workplaces are becoming increasingly digitised and automated. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving at pace, with technologies rapidly reshaping how people work. Maths will help develop technical and cognitive skills, and fuel methodical and logical thinking. There’s the risk though that too much emphasis in these areas will create a future workforce who’ll be competing with sophisticated technology and software - a fight that’ll be difficult to win. Instead, we should be focusing on developing skills that allow future generations to work alongside advancing technology.

Organisations need well-rounded individuals who can balance analytical skills with less linear thinking. People with emotional intelligence and softer skills can help to get the best out of technology and look beyond data. They can apply real-life experiences, as well as an understanding of beliefs and values, and an appreciation of thoughts and feelings to everyday decision making to ensure workplaces don’t lose their human touch. Studying the arts can help achieve this, and if extra maths is enforced, then it should be done so along with an extended learning of some form of creative subject.

Art takes many forms and can help to build creativity, confidence and lateral thinking, while also feeding imaginations that are limitless. Together, these attributes can create possibilities and fresh perspectives beyond the realms of quantitative and statistical skills and mindsets.

Studying the arts can also build self-discipline, resilience and perseverance, and encourage collaborative attitudes. These are skills valued in any progressive workplace, even more so during challenging economic times. They’re also characteristics that will help future generations to embrace rapid advances in AI at work – some of which we can’t even yet fully comprehend.

Combining the arts with maths can help people to look beyond the parameters of process. Creativity leads to an open-mindedness that enables people to avoid being confined by numerical logic. This can enhance problem solving capabilities and drive innovation, avoiding repetition of the same old tired methods.

An element of creativity also helps to avoid the potential uniformity of quantitative and statistical thinking, and can lead to a more unique application of technology and software. In ever-more digitised and automated workplaces, this could prove a real point of difference for organisations during staff recruitment and retention, and winning customers.

The big issues coming down the road for UK plc and for individual workers include a faster than ever pace of continual change, an increased drive to value diversity and inclusion, and the need to build sustainable work practices. Workers will need to take a broader, international perspective that thinks beyond ‘my role’ or ‘my business’ to consider the impact on other sectors, other countries and the planet. This ‘global lens’ can be partly taught through information sharing, but will only embed in our future workforce if we also encourage young people to be constantly and highly curious, to problem-solve, to be open-minded and to demonstrate resilience when their workplace is both ambiguous and ever-changing.