Russell Group expansion ‘worsening UK maths teacher shortage’

Chronic shortages of mathematics teachers in the UK could be linked to the rapid expansion of Russell Group departments, because their graduates are much less likely to enter education than those at lower tariff institutions, a leading British mathematician has claimed.

Speaking at The Maths Summit on 12 March, Catherine Hobbs, director of the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research, said the failure to train enough maths teachers could be traced to shifting patterns of undergraduate recruitment over the past decade, which has seen huge growth at many highly selective institutions. Meanwhile, annual enrolments in maths have reduced to a few dozen at some institutions with “middling tariffs”, she said.

“Some departments are getting smaller and smaller until they are not viable,” explained Professor Hobbs, who said this was significant for teaching because “about 25 per cent go into maths teaching but just 8 per cent from the upper echelons [higher tariff institutions] go into maths teaching.”

Just 1,844 new maths teachers were recruited last year – 90 per cent of the government’s target, which had itself been reduced from 2,800 to 2,044, according to Tes magazine. The shortages have been highlighted in light of Rishi Sunak’s plan to ensure all school pupils in England study maths until the age of 18 – an ambition, announced in January 2023, which will require many more maths teachers.

Speaking to Times Higher Education at the Science Museum, where science secretary Michelle Donelan and Royal Society president Sir Adrian Smith both gave speeches, Professor Hobbs said many maths departments had been massively affected by the decision to uncap institutional student number controls in 2015-16.

“Maths is very cheap to expand – you don’t need big pieces of equipment or new laboratories, so the bigger departments are really growing,” said Professor Hobbs, whose institute funds about 40 research fellows and has facilities in London, Bristol and Manchester.

“That would be great if the number of maths students was growing overall, but it’s staying the same,” she continued, adding that this was placing huge pressure on smaller departments, such as the one at her former institution, Oxford Brookes University, which announced plans to shut its maths department in November 2023.

That situation was partly driven by government metrics to encourage admissions to Russell Group universities – a score introduced by Michael Gove when he was education secretary, which is now under review.

“That might mean that a young person from the Oxford area – say from Cowley – who is very bright but doesn’t get an A* at A level, who wants to study maths but can’t get into Oxford, will be advised to do computer science at, say, Bristol, even if the [employment] outcomes would be as good for them [as studying computer science],” said Professor Hobbs, who said the UK faced a growing number of “maths deserts” with the closure of lower tariff maths departments.

Scrapping the Russell Group metric would be a step in the right direction, although a return to student number controls was unlikely and could even worsen the situation, she added.

“I don’t think that’s a possibility with this government and I’m not sure Labour want to do that either – it might even make the situation more elitist than it already is,” she said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com