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This article is the latest part of the FT’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign
The writer is a maths teacher, author of ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers’ and co-host of Maths Appeal podcast
作者是一名數學教師，著有《改變生活的數字魔力》一書，同時也是《數學吸引力》播客的聯合主持人。
If you are paid £9 per hour, what would your hourly rate be if you received a pay rise of 5 per cent? If you correctly answered £9.45, you’re in the top half of UK adult population.
如果你的時薪是9英鎊，那麼如果加薪5%，你的時薪會是多少？如果你的答案是9.45英鎊，那麼你就屬於英國成年人口的上半部分。
Unfortunately, research from the charity National Numeracy (where I am an ambassador), shows that nearly half of all working adults in the country have numeracy skills no better than those we’d expect of an 11-year-old schoolchild.
不幸的是，來自慈善機構英國國家數學協會(National Numeracy)（我是其中的一名大使）的研究顯示，該國近一半的在職成年人的數學能力不比我們對一個11歲學生的期望高。
Coupled with recent GCSE trends, this is a gloomy outlook. In England, students need maths (and English) GCSEs at a minimum of grade 4 to qualify for further study. Results this week show that maths papers graded 4 or above have fallen to 59.5 per cent, down from 61.1 per cent last year. (Eagled-eye analysts will observe the pass rate for 16-year-olds was 72 per cent, meaning the total was dragged down by older students resitting exams).
結合最近的普通中等教育證書（GCSE）趨勢，前景相當黯淡。在英格蘭，學生需要在數學（和英語）GCSE考試中至少獲得4級成績，纔能有資格繼續深造。本週的結果顯示，數學考試得分在4級或以上的比例降至59.5%，低於去年的61.1%。（眼尖的分析人士會注意到，16歲學生的透過率爲72%，這意味著總透過率被複考的年長學生拉低了。）
How can these results be improved? Perhaps maths teaching should be more inspiring and relevant. Outside Stratford station in east London, I recently bumped into a former student who said, “Mr Seagull, you were a lit (Gen Z for excellent) maths teacher, but we didn’t learn things that matter to us.”
如何改善這些結果？也許數學教學應該更具啓發性和相關性。最近，我在倫敦東部的斯特拉特福德車站外遇到了一位以前的學生，他說：「西格爾先生，你是一位很棒的數學老師，但我們沒有學到對我們有用的東西。」
There is an intrinsic beauty in understanding the mathematical forces that underpin our world. But some students might need persuading that abstract algebraic notions or the allure of prime numbers is actually useful.
理解支撐我們世界的數學力量中蘊含著一種內在美。但有些學生可能需要被說服，抽象的代數概念或質數的魅力實際上是有用的。
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Certainly these skills are not the same as numeracy, an essential subset of the discipline. Competent numeracy skills enable adults to have confidence in day-to-day life when working out discounts in shops, checking recipe ingredients, holiday budgeting or calculating loan repayment rates.
當然，這些技能與計算能力並不相同，計算能力是該學科的一個基本子集。具備熟練的計算能力可以使成年人在日常生活中更加自信，能夠計算商店折扣、檢查食譜成分、假期預算或計算貸款還款利率。
For young people, numeracy can easily be taught by strategising the values of football players during their Fantasy Premier League or calculating the overall cost of Taylor Swift concerts.
對於年輕人來說，透過在夢幻英超聯賽(Fantasy Premier League)期間爲足球運動員制定價值戰略，或者計算泰勒•斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)演唱會的總成本，很容易教會他們計算能力。
As a maths teacher for 10 years, I’ve always believed the talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not. It deeply saddens me that regional educational divides are widening. The worst-performing region in these GCSE results, the West Midlands, was nearly 10 percentage points below London.
作爲一名有著10年教齡的數學教師，我始終認爲天賦是平均分配的，但機會卻不是。令我深感悲哀的是，地區教育差距正在擴大。在這些GCSE成績中，表現最差的地區是西米德蘭茲郡(West Midlands)，比倫敦低了近10個百分點。
The CEO of the Northern Powerhouse partnership says that this gap largely reflect “differences . . . in the proportions of long-term disadvantaged children by region”. While the previous government’s phrase “levelling up” has been retired, maths education doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It reflects wider societal conditions.
北方振興計劃的首席執行長(CEO)表示，這種差距在很大程度上反映了「不同地區長期處於劣勢的兒童比例的差異」。雖然前任政府的「平衡發展」這一說法已經被淘汰，但數學教育並不是孤立存在的，它反映了更廣泛的社會條件。
Amid all this gloom, you may be surprised to learn that maths has been the most popular A-level subject for a decade. More than 100,000 teenagers took the exams this year. Despite that, the overall proportion of students studying maths at university has shrunk, leading to several universities cutting provisions and closing departments, according to the Campaign for Mathematical Sciences.
在這一片陰霾中，你可能會驚訝地發現，數學已經連續十年成爲最受歡迎的A-level科目。今年有超過10萬名青少年參加了考試。儘管如此，據數學科學運動組織稱，在大學學習數學的學生比例總體上在減少，導致一些大學削減了相關課程並關閉了數學系。
This will further destabilise the supply of maths teachers. One in eight maths lessons are already taught by someone without a maths degree and almost half of all secondary schools are using non-specialist teachers for maths.
這將進一步令數學教師的供應鏈不穩定。已有八分之一的數學課程由沒有數學學位的人授課，幾乎一半的中學都在使用非專業教師教授數學。
Given that half of children judged to be falling behind at the age of five end up not passing their GCSEs and that around 80 per cent of young people “fail” resits on their second attempt, the system is clearly not working.
鑑於在五歲時被認爲落後的孩子中，有一半最終未能透過GCSE考試，而約80%的年輕人在第二次補考時「未及格」，顯然這個系統是無效的。
The UK has to tackle a broader cultural issue where it is deemed acceptable to say you can’t do maths. Yes, the subject can be tricky, but all of us can learn to be confident and competent in it, especially when it comes to using numeracy in our day-to-day lives.
英國必須解決一個更廣泛的文化問題，即被認爲可以說自己不擅長數學是可以接受的。是的，數學可能有些棘手，但我們所有人都可以學會在日常生活中自信和熟練地運用數學，尤其是在使用數值的時候。
The curriculum is in desperate need of an update. Financial and data literacy must be included if we are to ensure that our young people become mathematically literate citizens able to compete in the modern world.
課程設置迫切需要更新。如果我們要確保年輕人成爲能夠在現代社會中競爭的數學素養公民，就必須將金融和數據素養納入其中。