Why Maths Week England? (a personal story)

A word from our founder

Maths Week England was set up in 2019 with the goal of ensuring that no children miss out on the opportunities that being a confident competent mathematician can give them. In 2021 it became the largest national maths festival in the world, thanks to an amazing and hard-working committee and a fantastic bunch of teachers.

I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I struggled at school, university, and well beyond. Severe untreated ADHD meant that I was frequently marked out as the naughty’ lazy‘ ‘forgetful‘ ‘untidy‘ ‘restless‘ or simply  ‘disorganised‘ kid. I found it hard to remember much for more than a few seconds, so discovering that maths didn’t have to be about just memory changed my life. I saw that it could be about having fun with your brain,  looking for patterns, spotting connections, making predictions and solving problems. Even if I had never been told about billions, I could predict with certainty that 7 billion plus two billion would be 9 billion. Awesome!

As I’ve travelled around the country, however, I’ve noticed that not every pupil sees maths this way. For some, the pressures of an over-crowded curriculum means that mathematics seems to them to be a painful and meaningless waste of time, with only the threat of not getting a GCSE pass keeping them going. I don’t believe any child deserves to feel this way. I believe we as teachers can change this perception, and help build a nation of confident mathematicians, who both use and enjoy mathematics. This is why Maths Week England exists. I hope you will join me and help change the conversation around mathematics across the nation.

Thank you for your support!

Andrew Jeffrey, founder and fan, Maths Week England

The Story so far:

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