Rent, wage slips and interest rates may feature in new AQA maths test for pupils

Secondary school children could be made to take maths tests that look at their ability to work out phone bills and rent to prepare them for life, an exam board has said.

The plans to help teenagers understand real-life situations would not make numeracy tests easier, said Colin Hughes, the chief executive of the AQA, an awarding body in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

He said the purpose of the new type of questions would be to help pupils who are good at academic mathematical problems such as theorems and formulae but who may struggle in the real world.

Hughes told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Breakfast: “It’s not making it easier at all. What it’s doing is saying: think about it, you use mathematics all the time every day. I absolutely guarantee that several times today you will use your head to do various kinds of calculations. Everyone does it. The issue is that we don’t really enable every student to prove that they can do it.”

The AQA is piloting a numeracy test that could give pupils a maths proficiency certificate, like a driving licence or a music grade, even if they never pass a GCSE in the subject, the Times reported. The test would have to be introduced by the government.

Calculating net pay from a wage slip, looking at telephone contracts to see which is the cheapest package and figuring out how much more money you would need to cover a rent rise that is in line with inflation are among some potential sample questions, it is understood.

Managing a bank account, understanding interest rates and measuring milk formula are other areas that could be covered when the test is piloted in the next couple of months in schools.

Hughes added: “We now have, particularly digitally, the means to enable people to practise, get used to doing things like that and then actually to test themselves on the run. So it’s not easier to do, but it is easier to deliver – that’s the really big thing.”

About a third of GCSE candidates fail to achieve a grade 4 in maths each year. The grade is considered a pass by most employers and colleges.

It is expected that pupils from 14 years old up to those in sixth forms and further education colleges could use a new platform to assess and improve on their real-life mathematics skills.

Hughes said that although some people may struggle with theorems and formulae, “when you actually put them into a situation when they’re obliged to use numeracy as we would put it in the real world – that might be looking at phone bills, it might be working out rent, calculating, often it is calculating money but not only – then they are absolutely fine.”

He also said it was not only those struggling pupils who may face difficulties, as there were “students who are very good at that academic stuff” who “quite often struggle in the real world”.