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.