Women do like onerous maths, says youngsters’s commissioner

The kids’s commissioner has stated women “do like onerous maths” in an obvious criticism of one other authorities tsar’s earlier feedback about women’ dislike of taking A-level physics.

Talking on the Confederation of College Trusts’ annual convention in Birmingham on Friday, Dame Rachel de Souza stated she had opened Sir Isaac Newton, a maths and science post-16 free college in Norwich, including: “I simply wish to let you know that in my opinion, women like onerous maths.

“And the ladies within the Large Ask (her survey of kids post-pandemic) that I spoke to talked concerning the significance of feminine STEM position fashions, that was extra the problem going into the classroom when there have been all boys in physics, it wasn’t that they couldn’t do onerous maths.”

Earlier this 12 months, the federal government’s social mobility tsar and headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh stated “physics isn’t one thing women are likely to fancy” and that “there’s loads of onerous maths in there that I believe that they might relatively not do”.

Dame Rachel additionally stated she had visited Ark Boulton Academy on Friday and that “the kids and the mums and households speaking about ‘there isn’t a protected place to go, and that’s the reason our children are sitting in taking part in on their PS4, as a result of I’m frightened of what they’re going to satisfy down of their native store, on the street and I’m apprehensive concerning the park’”.

She added that on-line, there was some “unbelievably dangerous content material” for youngsters and that oldsters had instructed her they have been “completely terrified” about conserving youngsters protected.

She stated pupils had talked to her about “poverty, about housing, overcrowding, what it’s wish to sleep in a bed room, sleep in a lounge as your bed room with ten others and attempt to get an training”.

Dame Rachel stated the “primary” precedence for faculties and trusts can be getting youngsters again to highschool in September and has set a 100% attendance goal for the 2022 autumn time period.

“Whether or not it’s the secretary of state or whoever it’s standing up right here, that’s the place we wish the sources to go,” she stated, including that if trusts stated they might get each pupil again “no matter it takes, then I do know we are going to do higher”.

Jo Saxton, Ofqual chief regulator, instructed the CST convention that pupils didn’t need Covid grades and “actually, actually wish to do their exams”.

She stated that this 12 months was a “staging submit” earlier than returning to pre-pandemic GCSE and A-level grading requirements.

“I have to be clear that while on the one hand this would be the most generously graded sequence of examination outcomes ever and that nonetheless outcomes shall be greater than they have been in 2019, outcomes shall be decrease than in 2021.

“Your faculties are prone to discover their outcomes are decrease than 2021 when exams didn’t go forward. Faculties that obtain outcomes greater than 2021 are going to be few and much between.”

She added: “I see it as my job to be sure that no scholar is deprived by a maths query that depends on understanding seating names in a theatre or that your capacity to be assessed in a overseas language doesn’t hinge on whether or not or not you realize the etiquette of a snowboarding journey”, referring to earlier GCSE examination questions which have been criticised as socially unique.