The right amount of English and maths for a job
Nigel Williams, 5 September 2013
How much English and maths do you need to do a job? The Secretary of State for Education clearly considers that a GCSE grade C in each is a minimum standard. It will take a fair amount of research to determine whether compulsory resits will get many more people up to that standard than managed it at the first attempt. Obviously for very many jobs, including a lot of the more appealing ones, even a grade C is not going to be a unique selling point for a job applicant. The latest unemployment rate in London stands above 70 per cent for male 16 and 17 year olds. Employers there are in a position to ask for more than the minimum.
At the other end of the scale, the Higher Education Statistics Agency published figures on the working histories of recent graduates.The survey disaggregated graduates according to the type and subject of degree. English is counted as a language, so is grouped with foreign languages for statistical purposes. Without denying the value of studying our own language in cultural terms, foreign language skills have a distinct economic appeal. English really needs a category of its own in order to distinguish its true value in employment terms.
Of students finishing full-time postgraduate courses in mathematical sciences in 2008/9, only 1.5 per cent were taken to be unemployed, against a massive 17 per cent still engaged in further study, four years after finishing a postgraduate degree. One hopes they are not re-sitting their English GCSEs. 80 per cent were in part work, mostly full-time and with a further few combining work and further study.
Comparable students finishing language degrees were, four years on, only working full time in 57 per cent of cases. 4.8 per cent were taken to be unemployed and 35 per cent were in part-time work, further study or a mixture.
Among first-degree graduates, mathematical sciences and languages were both marginally below the average rate of full-time employment. Language graduates were more susceptible to unemployment but, for both subjects, part-time work and further study were popular options. Some do not show up as in employment because they followed their first degree with a qualification in education, so they could pass some of the knowledge on as teachers. However, substantial proportions of our most able users of maths and English are not using their skills in the sphere of employment.
Matching education to jobs is an immensely complicated process. Education prepares people to take a constructive place in society, of which filling a job is only one important part. The mathematical science and language graduates will, in most cases, have gone comfortably beyond the levels of numeracy and literacy needed to do most jobs, to the point where they are adding to human capital and to general well-being. At the bottom of the pyramid, if it takes until after age 16 to gain enough literacy and numeracy to do the most basic job, then it suggests we either need a faster way of teaching children or a supply of jobs that need qualities other than intellect.