Maths: an essential subject whose level is falling in a majority of countries

The ana­lys­is dif­fers accord­ing to the degree obtained on leav­ing school. Unsur­pris­ingly, bet­ter labour mar­ket oppor­tun­it­ies are avail­able to high­er edu­ca­tion gradu­ates in almost all OECD coun­tries. This is par­tic­u­larly true in France, where 87% of 25–34 year-olds with ter­tiary qual­i­fic­a­tions are in employ­ment, com­pared with only 51% of those with no qual­i­fic­a­tions (the OECD aver­ages are 85% and 61% respect­ively). This is one of the largest gaps in the OECD coun­tries. A dip­loma is the best pro­tec­tion against unem­ploy­ment or inactiv­ity in France, and those who drop out of school find them­selves in a very pre­cari­ous pos­i­tion on the labour market.

As far as high­er edu­ca­tion is con­cerned, south­ern European coun­tries (Spain, Italy and Greece) are the worst per­formers, with employ­ment rates below 80%. There are two main reas­ons for this: some uni­ver­sity degrees are still not highly val­ued by com­pan­ies, but above all it is youth unem­ploy­ment rates that remain high in these coun­tries. More sur­pris­ingly, South Korea, with an employ­ment rate of 77%, is also at the bot­tom of the league table. On the one hand this is because the ultra-fast expan­sion of high­er edu­ca­tion has led to sig­ni­fic­ant dis­crep­an­cies between the needs of com­pan­ies and the dur­a­tion and require­ments of train­ing. And secondly, because Korean women often take time out of work after high­er edu­ca­tion to start a family.

Among OECD coun­tries where employ­ment rate of 25–34 year-olds with ter­tiary edu­ca­tion is close to or exceeds 90%, there are coun­tries where ter­tiary voca­tion­al courses are highly developed and sup­por­ted by com­pan­ies (Ger­many, Lux­em­bourg, the Neth­er­lands) and some Nor­d­ic coun­tries (Nor­way, Ice­land and Sweden) where employ­ment rates are high, regard­less of the degree obtained.

The labour market’s interest in sci­ence gradu­ates – tech­no­logy, engin­eer­ing and math­em­at­ics (STEM) – remains high. These fields of study still offer bet­ter employ­ment rates and often the best salar­ies, reflect­ing the demand of an increas­ingly innov­a­tion-driv­en soci­ety. In fig­ures, gradu­ates in inform­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies (IT) can expect a 7 point high­er employ­ment rate than gradu­ates in human­it­ies and arts, or social sci­ences, journ­al­ism and inform­a­tion. Among sci­entif­ic fields, how­ever, employ­ment rates are uneven: gradu­ates in nat­ur­al sci­ences, math­em­at­ics and stat­ist­ics are more likely to have sim­il­ar employ­ment rates to those of arts gradu­ates; both of which are lower than those enjoyed by engin­eers or IT specialists.

This is sur­pris­ing, as math­em­at­ics still plays a major role in edu­ca­tion sys­tems today, both in terms of train­ing for the pro­fes­sions and selec­tion for high­er edu­ca­tion. Indeed, the level of math­em­at­ics is a mat­ter of con­cern in many coun­tries. The res­ults of the PISA study of 15-year-old stu­dents show a decline in the level in a major­ity of coun­tries, par­tic­u­larly in France, where in 2003, 15% of stu­dents obtained very good per­form­ances (5 and 6 in PISA, 6 being the max­im­um), where­as in 2018, they were only 11%. Stu­dents in dif­fi­culty (below level 2) accoun­ted for 17% of the total in 2003 and 21% in 2018. In 15 years, France has thus gone from being one of the coun­tries where 15-year-olds per­form well in math­em­at­ics to one that is just at the OECD aver­age. The situ­ation at primary level is even more wor­ry­ing. In the last inter­na­tion­al study (TIMSS), which assessed the level of math­em­at­ics of pupils in CM1, France was at the bot­tom of the rank­ing with an aver­age score of 488 points, com­pared with the European aver­age of 527 points.

Coun­tries where invest­ment in teach­er train­ing is or has been insuf­fi­cient gen­er­ally have a fall­ing stand­ard. The pro­fes­sion of math­em­at­ics teach­er is today cruelly lack­ing in attract­ive­ness, not­ably for reas­ons of remu­ner­a­tion, prestige, lack of con­tinu­ous train­ing and career devel­op­ment. In ele­ment­ary edu­ca­tion in France, there is also a prob­lem of skills. It is aston­ish­ing that stu­dents who choose lit­er­ary stud­ies because of their poor per­form­ance in maths in high school are the same ones who, after a degree in Arts or Human­it­ies, go on to teach­ing careers in ele­ment­ary school. Accord­ing to the TIMSS study, CM1 teach­ers in France are the most likely to report feel­ing uncom­fort­able when it comes to improv­ing the math­em­at­ic­al under­stand­ing of strug­gling stu­dents (39% vs. 21% on aver­age). Yet the 2018 PISA study showed that teach­ers’ enthu­si­asm, their abil­ity to pass on their know­ledge with pleas­ure and con­fid­ence, are the primary factors in stu­dents’ success.

Improv­ing edu­ca­tion­al per­form­ance in France will there­fore require bet­ter train­ing for those involved, but also the con­tinu­ation of the policy under­taken since 2012 to com­bat edu­ca­tion­al and social inequal­it­ies. A grow­ing num­ber of coun­tries, and in very dif­fer­ent geo­graph­ic­al areas – UK, Fin­land, Aus­tralia, Canada, Esto­nia and Japan, to name but a few – are recon­cil­ing above-aver­age per­form­ance with great­er social equity in per­form­ance. The inequal­it­ies observed in France are there­fore not inev­it­able. The num­ber one factor is always human invest­ment. In South Korea, for example, the best teach­ers are sys­tem­at­ic­ally alloc­ated to stu­dents with dif­fi­culties. In France, the oppos­ite is true. Young, inex­per­i­enced teach­ers are often assigned to dis­ad­vant­aged schools and thus con­fron­ted with the least pre­pared pupils.

In coun­tries such as Fin­land, Esto­nia and Canada, school is not about grad­ing or sort­ing stu­dents accord­ing to their res­ults in sub­jects. The main aim is broad­er, to pre­pare young people to become enlightened cit­izens in the world of the 21^st Cen­tury and to cre­ate voca­tions. The pro­fes­sion­al and busi­ness worlds are very present in the school cur­ricula of these coun­tries, start­ing at sec­ond­ary school level. This less dis­cip­lin­ary approach, more rooted in the real-world, is devel­op­ing all over the plan­et. We see this in our OECD pro­ject “Edu­ca­tion 2030”. In Fin­land, for example, the cur­riculum now focuses on non-cog­nit­ive skills such as cre­ativ­ity, curi­os­ity, col­lab­or­a­tion, self-con­fid­ence and com­mu­nic­a­tion. Numer­acy is still import­ant, but the rela­tion­ship with math­em­at­ics is unen­cumbered and treated in an inter­dis­cip­lin­ary man­ner. On the oth­er hand, it is inter­est­ing to note that France and Japan are the two coun­tries, in PISA 2012, where math­em­at­ics gen­er­ated the most anxi­ety among 15 year old students.

We recom­mend strength­en­ing ini­tial teach­er train­ing on the ped­ago­gic­al side of the job. The chal­lenges are not the same as they were 30 years ago, edu­ca­tion has become more demo­crat­ic and teach­ers have to deal with increas­ingly het­ero­gen­eous classes, which requires a change in the ped­agogy used. The attract­ive­ness of the teach­ing pro­fes­sion must also be enhanced, par­tic­u­larly in the sci­entif­ic field, in order to face com­pet­i­tion with the private sec­tor: increase remu­ner­a­tion, allow for career devel­op­ment, devel­op con­tinu­ing edu­ca­tion in order to have access to the best research in neur­os­cience and edu­ca­tion­al sci­ences. Finally, the best teach­ers must be mobil­ised for the most dif­fi­cult groups, and the policy in favour of the first levels of edu­ca­tion and dis­ad­vant­aged schools must be extended.