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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
作者是一名数学教师，著有《改变生活的数字魔力》一书，同时也是《数学吸引力》播客的联合主持人。
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.
如果你的时薪是9英镑，那么如果加薪5%，你的时薪会是多少？如果你的答案是9.45英镑，那么你就属于英国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，来自慈善机构英国国家数学协会(National Numeracy)（我是其中的一名大使）的研究显示，该国近一半的在职成年人的数学能力不比我们对一个11岁学生的期望高。
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).
结合最近的普通中等教育证书（GCSE）趋势，前景相当黯淡。在英格兰，学生需要在数学（和英语）GCSE考试中至少获得4级成绩，才能有资格继续深造。本周的结果显示，数学考试得分在4级或以上的比例降至59.5%，低于去年的61.1%。（眼尖的分析人士会注意到，16岁学生的通过率为72%，这意味着总通过率被复考的年长学生拉低了。）
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.”
如何改善这些结果？也许数学教学应该更具启发性和相关性。最近，我在伦敦东部的斯特拉特福德车站外遇到了一位以前的学生，他说：“西格尔先生，你是一位很棒的数学老师，但我们没有学到对我们有用的东西。”
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.
理解支撑我们世界的数学力量中蕴含着一种内在美。但有些学生可能需要被说服，抽象的代数概念或质数的魅力实际上是有用的。
FT金融扫盲与包容运动
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.
当然，这些技能与计算能力并不相同，计算能力是该学科的一个基本子集。具备熟练的计算能力可以使成年人在日常生活中更加自信，能够计算商店折扣、检查食谱成分、假期预算或计算贷款还款利率。
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.
对于年轻人来说，通过在梦幻英超联赛(Fantasy Premier League)期间为足球运动员制定价值战略，或者计算泰勒•斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)演唱会的总成本，很容易教会他们计算能力。
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.
作为一名有着10年教龄的数学教师，我始终认为天赋是平均分配的，但机会却不是。令我深感悲哀的是，地区教育差距正在扩大。在这些GCSE成绩中，表现最差的地区是西米德兰兹郡(West Midlands)，比伦敦低了近10个百分点。
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.
北方振兴计划的首席执行官(CEO)表示，这种差距在很大程度上反映了“不同地区长期处于劣势的儿童比例的差异”。虽然前任政府的“平衡发展”这一说法已经被淘汰，但数学教育并不是孤立存在的，它反映了更广泛的社会条件。
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.
在这一片阴霾中，你可能会惊讶地发现，数学已经连续十年成为最受欢迎的A-level科目。今年有超过10万名青少年参加了考试。尽管如此，据数学科学运动组织称，在大学学习数学的学生比例总体上在减少，导致一些大学削减了相关课程并关闭了数学系。
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.
这将进一步令数学教师的供应链不稳定。已有八分之一的数学课程由没有数学学位的人授课，几乎一半的中学都在使用非专业教师教授数学。
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.
鉴于在五岁时被认为落后的孩子中，有一半最终未能通过GCSE考试，而约80%的年轻人在第二次补考时“未及格”，显然这个系统是无效的。
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.
英国必须解决一个更广泛的文化问题，即被认为可以说自己不擅长数学是可以接受的。是的，数学可能有些棘手，但我们所有人都可以学会在日常生活中自信和熟练地运用数学，尤其是在使用数值的时候。
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.
课程设置迫切需要更新。如果我们要确保年轻人成为能够在现代社会中竞争的数学素养公民，就必须将金融和数据素养纳入其中。