We are calling on other business leaders to join forces with us and educators to increase the dangerously low level of maths and physics subject uptake at secondary schools (Class revolt, G2, 2 February). Tough Choices, a new report by Your Life campaign in partnership with AT Kearney and supported by the CBI, found that young people are deterred from studying maths and physics A-levels, which are seen as too theoretical, inaccessible, and only for the “ultra-bright”. Yet they unlock a vast array of exciting jobs, which are fundamental to the businesses we operate and the UK’s global competitiveness.
There is a need for businesses and schools to work together and forge better links between the curriculum and careers. By bringing our experience of the workplace to the classroom, we can help teachers, parents and careers advisers to explain the opportunities maths and physics subjects can offer students. Together we can empower young people to develop vital skills that will underpin the UK’s future economic growth.
Mark Page Managing director, UK and Ireland, AT Kearney
Vicki Saward Strategic pursuit director, applied intelligence, BAE Systems
Richard Howson Chief executive, Carillion
Barb Samardzich Chief operating officer, Ford of Europe
Jane Griffiths EMEA company group chairman, Janssen, the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson
Richard Martin Technical director, Nestlé Confectionery UK and Ireland
Debra Valentine Group executive, legal & regulatory, Rio Tinto
Sally Martin Vice-president, HSSE Downstream, Shell
• Your report about a failing school in Oxford was imbalanced (2 February), misleading and inconclusive but wholly in keeping with so much of the Guardian’s uncritical writing on teaching, and on the on NHS.. The report quotes teachers as feeling “almost criminalised”, while it is headlined “Criminalised as a failing school”, which is tabloid misrepresentation of the facts. The staffing difficulties described in the article may well lead to a failing school, but one also reads of inner-city schools facing precisely the same difficult challenges, yet staff manage to achieve outstanding results. Please may we have more balanced reporting in the place of cheerleading?
Tim Elster
Ashbourne, Derbyshire
