Adult Literacy and Numeracy

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

First, I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to other hon. Members, for arriving late. I was in a Select Committee interviewing the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary so I could not be here earlier, but I wanted to speak in the debate and I am glad to have the opportunity to do so. I will not speak for too long, because others wish to speak.

I am particularly concerned about numeracy. I used to teach economics and statistics and am familiar with numeracy problems. Lord Moser, who is a splendid member of the other place, wrote a report some 15 years ago that I have talked about in the Chamber many times. He found that more than 50% of the population were innumerate. He illustrated that by saying that 50% of the population did not understand what 50% means. When I write articles for newspapers I do not just write 10% but “one in 10”, to make sure that people get the message, because not everyone understands percentages.

I have encountered many adults with numeracy problems. When I taught economics, the first question I would ask my students was: what is the difference between 1 million and 1 billion? Many of them did not know, so I said that a million is not very much and a billion is quite a lot. I used to ask, “How many houses can be bought for £1 million and how many houses can be bought for £1 billion?” In Luton, one might be able to buy five for £1 million and 5,000 for £1 billion.

[Mr Sheerman]

Was my hon. Friend teaching in the US or the UK? The answer would be different if he taught in the US.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I was teaching in Britain, where of course 1,000 million makes 1 billion—let us get that straight from the beginning.

I met Lord Moser recently at a reception in the House of Lords. He is an elderly man now, but he still despairs of the problem of adult innumeracy. Adults are bamboozled by politicians because we throw numbers about all the time—all parties do it. A Front Bench spokesperson can say, “We are going to spend £20 million extra on the national health service.” Twenty million pounds is absolutely nothing in the scheme of things in public expenditure, but £20 billion is a significant amount. Politicians constantly bamboozle the electorate, knowing that they can be not very sophisticated at handling such numbers.

I used to teach elementary statistics to A-level students studying sociology. I used to do simple sums with square numbers to find the square root. For example, the square root of 100 is 10—that is quite easy. When one of my students said that nine times nine was 89 and 10 times 10 was 110, I realised there was a problem. I have another anecdote. The daughter of a good friend of mine wanted to be a nurse. She had various O-levels, so I said, “Why can’t you be a nurse?” She said, “I can’t pass O-level maths.” I asked her why not. She said that she could not do multiplication because she had never been taught it—imagine that.

We have to go back to a philosophy of education and teaching that was utterly misguided. My wife and my brother are both primary school teachers. In the 1960s, 1970s and, to a certain extent, the 1980s, rote learning of tables was regarded as anathema—absolutely forbidden. Complete and total nonsense. Of course, I angered many of my good friends on the left who thought I was some sort of authoritarian, because I thought that learning tables was a good idea so that people knew that 12 times 12 was 144—elementary stuff.

When I first entered the House in 1997, I raised this issue with the then Schools Minister, Stephen Byers. I said that we had to look at teaching methods and the interface between teachers and pupils, particularly in primary schools so that pupils learn numeracy properly at the beginning. He said, “Oh no, that would be too prescriptive.” Sometimes we have to be prescriptive. We have to say that some things work and some things do not work. Let us look at other countries where numeracy is better.

The international comparison table published in The Independent yesterday showed that we are slipping down the table, and that 16 to 24-year-olds are actually worse than the previous generation. We are now quite low down the table, which is very worrying. If we are to produce the engineers and the skills we need for the future, we have to address numeracy problems. Governments have to look at what works and try to ensure that that is what is applied in schools. It is not enough to reorganise institutions—creating academies and free schools and so on. We have to look at what is happening in the classroom at every state school, because we have a problem.

Fisheries

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I personally agree very strongly with the hon. Gentleman, but we might have some difficulty persuading a majority of the House to agree with us. I believe that the European Commission and the European Union will not shift until they have the sense that Britain is serious about wanting to abandon the common fisheries policy or seek a derogation.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend will know that I am quite a strong pro-European, but fishing gets me nearer to his camp than I might normally be. My constituency is right in the middle of England, nowhere near the sea, but my constituents care about this issue. They certainly care about discards and about the quality of the sea and of the fish in it. Why can we not get an agreement that works for this country within the European Union? Let me remind my hon. Friend that before the European Union existed, it was a total dog-eat-dog mess. It might not have been dogfish, but it was dog eat dog and it was worse than it is now.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Going back to what happened before the common fisheries policy might not be the best idea. We are now living in an age in which we are more sensible about these things and I would like to think that we would have an industry that was properly regulated by our Government on behalf of our consumers and our fishermen.