Addressing workplace skills needs in Scotland through reform of mathematical and data education
A roundtable summary on how mathematical and data education must change to meet the shifting needs of the Scottish industrial landscape. The event was not aimed at education experts, but rather representatives from Scottish industry who could speak to the changing skills requirements in their respective sectors.
Context
This roundtable was part of Creating Connections 2025, where experts from academia, industry, and government came together to explore scientific, technical, and policy opportunities shaping Scotland’s future.
Key points
To achieve Scotland’s ambitions for net-zero and data-driven economic growth, the education system needs a cohesive strategy to ensure quality, consistency and equity. This discussion indicated that such a strategy would need to include:
- Redefining mathematical success: Expanding and elevating applied qualifications as credible alternatives to traditional maths routes. Offering diverse and valued pathways will shift the emphasis to ensuring appropriate content and allow for an approach that supports reaching a “mathematical fitness” for work, life, and informed citizenship alongside the provision for progression in mathematics related careers.
- Cross-curricular integration: Contextualising mathematics in terms of climate change, health, economics, and AI could help to break down confidence and gender barriers and reinforce its necessity in practical terms. Using signage, vocabulary changes and lesson design to make maths visible everywhere will reiterate its role as the bedrock of most school subjects and everyday life skills.
- Making ethics part of the equation: Embedding ethical reasoning into mathematics and data education will enable students to understand the social implications of their work, especially in fields like AI. This will ensure the workforce of tomorrow have the skills to grapple with the rapid changes in technology for which the current education system is ill-equipped.
- Empowering teachers: If we want to encourage the recognition of maths and data skills across the curriculum, teachers will require the training and resources necessary to enable them to share responsibility without removing accountability. As one participant argued, addressing the question of an adequate supply of suitably trained mathematics teachers is as important (possibly more so) than the current review of the syllabus which Scotland’s Curriculum Improvement Cycle is now undertaking. We must enhance the facility for teachers to update their knowledge and competence, for instance by establishing refresher courses in applications of mathematics in computing and programming languages.
- Research: Further research is needed to identify and evaluate the suitability of the existing mathematical and data education system in Scotland, especially in relation to the changing needs of industry and meeting governmental targets.
The OECD’s 2021 report on improving schools in Scotland recommended that policymakers “continue building curricular capacity at various levels of the system, using research by developing the environment of curriculum design support around schools, including in supporting exchange and collaboration between practitioners for curriculum design and experimentation within and across schools; and collaboration between schools and universities” (p 13).
Steps towards this goal have been scarce since the government’s launch of the Education Research Seminar Series in 2022, reinforcing the necessity of investment in an education system which is increasingly inadequate in preparing young Scots for financial independence, employment and informed societal engagement.
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