In 2025, extra younger other folks than ever have opened their A-level effects to learn how they did of their maths examination. As soon as once more, maths has been the most well liked A-level topic, with 112,138 entries in 2025.
That is up via greater than 4% when compared with 2024. Entries in additional maths, an A-level that expands at the maths curriculum, have additionally risen – an building up of seven% since 2024, with over 19,000 entries this 12 months.
The enjoyment I skilled after I found out in my maths stage that most of the topics I studied in class – chemistry, biology, physics or even song – are woven in combination via a mathematical material, is one thing I’ve by no means forgotten.
I’m desirous about the concept many younger persons are about to revel in this for themselves. However I’m involved that fewer scholars can have the similar alternatives sooner or later, as extra maths departments are pressured to downsize or shut, and as we grow to be extra reliant on synthetic intelligence.
There are a variety of variations between finding out maths at college when compared with faculty. Whilst this can also be daunting in the beginning, all of those variations underscore simply how richly layered, deeply interconnected and hugely appropriate maths is.
At college, no longer simplest do you be informed gorgeous formulation and robust algorithms, but additionally grapple with why those formulation are true and dissect precisely what those algorithms are doing. That is the theory of the “proof”, which isn’t explored a lot in class and is one thing that may first of all take scholars via wonder.
However proving why formulation are true and why algorithms paintings is crucial and essential step in being in a position uncover new and thrilling programs of the mathematics you’re finding out.
Maths levels contain learning why arithmetic works how it does.
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A maths stage may end up in careers in finance, knowledge science, AI, cybersecurity, quantum computing, ecology and local weather modelling. However extra importantly, maths is a fantastically ingenious topic, one that permits other folks to be immensely expressive of their clinical and inventive concepts.
A contemporary and surprising instance of that is Hannah Cairo, who at simply 17 disproved a 40-year previous conjecture.
If there’s a message I want I knew after I began finding out college arithmetic it’s this: maths isn’t just one thing to be informed, however one thing to create. I’m frequently amazed at how my scholars in finding new tactics to unravel issues that I first encountered over two decades in the past.
Accessiblity of maths levels
However the query of occurring to check maths at college is not only a topic of A-level grades. The hot and rising phenomenon of maths deserts – spaces of the rustic the place maths levels don’t seem to be introduced – is making maths levels much less available, specifically for college kids outdoor of huge towns.
Coming near near examine from The Marketing campaign for Mathematical Sciences (CAMS), of which I’m a supporter, displays that research-intensive, upper tariff universities – those that require upper grades to get in – took 66% of UK maths undergraduates in 2024, up from 56% in 2006.
This places smaller departments in lower-tariff universities at risk of closure as enrolments drop. The CAMS examine forecasts that an extra 9 maths departments can have fewer than 50 enrolments of their levels via 2035.
This cycle will additional listen maths levels in prime tariff establishments, reinforcing stereotypes akin to that simplest exceptionally proficient other folks must pass on to check maths at college. This would even have serious penalties for trainer recruitment. The CAMS examine additionally discovered that 25% of maths graduates from lower-tariff universities pass into jobs in training, in comparison to 8% from upper tariff universities.
Maths within the age of AI
The rising capacity and class of AI could also be placing force on maths departments.
With Open AI’s declare that their lately launched GPT-5 is like having “a team of PhD-level experts in your pocket”, the temptation to overly depend on AI poses additional dangers to the lifestyles and high quality of long run maths levels.
However the strategy of turning wisdom into knowledge and concept into utility comes from the act of doing: doing calculations and forming logical and rigorous arguments. That’s the key constituent of pondering obviously and creatively. It guarantees scholars have possession in their abilities, capacities, and the paintings that they produce.
An information scientist will nonetheless require an in-depth operating wisdom of the mathematical, algorithmic and statistical concept underpinning knowledge science if they’re going to be efficient. The similar for monetary analysts, engineers and laptop scientists.
The prestigious mathematician and laptop scientist Leslie Lamport mentioned that “coding is to programming what typing is to writing”. Simply as you want to have some concept of what you’re writing earlier than you kind it, you want to have some concept of the (mathematical) set of rules you’re developing earlier than you code it.
It’s value remembering that the early pioneers in AI – John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, Alan Turing – all had levels in arithmetic. So we have now each reason why to be expecting that long run breakthroughs in AI will come from other folks with arithmetic levels operating creatively in interdisciplinary groups.
That is any other nice function of maths: its versatility. It’s an issue that doesn’t simply educate you for a role however lets you revel in a wealthy and enjoyable occupation – one that may include many various jobs, in many various fields, over the process an entire life.
