Mathematics education is not taught uniformly as exams and the syllabus vary across the countries of the United Kingdom, notably Scotland.
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications was formed in 1964, and is the UK's chartered body for mathematicians, being based in Essex.
The Nuffield Mathematics Teaching Project started in September 1964, lasting until 1971, to look at primary education, under Edith Biggs, from the Schools Inspectorate.
At Ruskin College on Monday 18 October 1976 Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan made a radical speech decrying the lack of numeracy in school leavers, possibly prompted by the William Tyndale affair in 1975.
[2] The Prime Minister also questioned why so many girls gave up science before leaving secondary school.
But the Labour Party, instead, took curriculum change slowly, merely setting up the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of Mathematics in Schools, under Sir Wilfred Cockcroft, with Hilary Shuard and Elizabeth Williams.
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed that in some topics, the UK apparently had adequate Mathematics teaching, and from such reports Sir Keith Joseph merely implemented feasibility studies of national attainment standards, but the next education secretary, Kenneth Baker, Baron Baker of Dorking, wanted a lot more than mere feasibility studies.
Anita Straker and Hilary Shuard were part of the team that developed the primary national curriculum.
From the 1990s, mainly the late 1990s, computers became integrated into mathematics education at primary and secondary levels in the UK.
Labour said it showed the government's simplistic approach to education standards, adding that raw results cannot reflect the real achievement of schools.
The United Kingdom Mathematics Trust summer school is held at The Queen's Foundation in Birmingham each year.
Mathematics and Computing Colleges were introduced in 2002 as part of the widened specialist schools programme; by 2007 there were 222 of these in England.
The Excellence in Cities report was launched in March 1999, which led to the Advanced Extension Award in 2002, replacing the S-level for the top 10% of A-level candidates.
The National Higher Education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (HE STEM) Programme was founded in August 2009 by HEFCE and HEFCW; the scheme had six regions across England and Wales, working with the universities of Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester Metropolitan, Southampton and Swansea; it was funded by £21m, and developed by the University of Birmingham STEM Education Centre; the scheme finished in July 2012.
It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.
From the UPMAP project (Understanding Participation rates in post-16 Mathematics and Physics) of the ESRC Targeted Initiative on Science and Mathematics Education (TISME), in conjunction with the Institute of Physics, it was found that uptake of Maths A-level was linked to the grade at GCSE.
The House of Lords July 2012 report Higher Education in STEM Subjects recommended that everyone study some type of Maths after 16.
[11] Professor Robert Coe,[12] Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) at Durham University conducted research on grade inflation.
The Labour government wanted to expand higher education, so required 'proof' that academic standards at A-level appeared to be rising, or at least not falling, so requiring higher education to expand for this wider apparent academic achievement.
The supply of qualified (QTS in England and Wales) Maths teachers in the UK is largely a postcode lottery.