Mathematical Sciences

Question

15:06:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support mathematical sciences.

My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting mathematical sciences across the United Kingdom. The Government fund a variety of initiatives to support schools through the DfE, amounting to £185 million since 2014. Direct research funding to UKRI amounts to £24 million. Funding to the Royal Society through DSIT amounts to £42 million. Our wider support to STEM stands at close to £100 million in the skills ecosystem, including Skills England. We continue to work directly with the mathematical sciences sector to identify further opportunities where the Government can support this critical activity.

I thank the noble Lord for his Answer and indeed for the courtesy of his noble friend the Minister, who met me recently to discuss these issues. Does the noble Lord agree that the advanced mathematics are essential to underpinning everything that Britain hopes to achieve in AI and in advanced industry, including defence? Will he reaffirm the previous Government’s commitment to the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme—which has recently been cut, to the distress of Sir Demis Hassabis and others—and to providing the United Kingdom with the next-generation computing power that we need?

My Lords, to ensure value for money and alignment with government policies, we are reviewing the activities delivered by the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme and the funding it receives. So far, we have spent something like £33 million on it, and close to £185 million has been spent on the maths hubs. Some £24 million of this has gone through UKRI to some maths programmes. We are discussing how to ensure the continuity of these services and redirecting some of the funding while plans are drawn up to better focus the programme towards the Government’s opportunity mission and skills for the future, such as AI and data science. I can also assure the noble Lord that the Government have invested some £300 million in new supercomputers in Bristol and Cambridge, and are moving to increase computing capacity a further twentyfold by 2030.

My Lords, in addition to the cuts mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, the Government have withdrawn funding from the planned national academy for the mathematical sciences, but polling among employers for the Maths Horizons project found that maths skills are increasingly in demand. Do we not badly need a national strategy for maths, as the Campaign for Mathematical Sciences is calling for?

I thank the noble Lord for the question. There is nothing to cancel. The national academy was devised by the previous Government, who allocated £6 million towards it when they were not properly funded. The money was not there in the first place and £6 million was a meagre figure, whereas we are spending more and more money on other learned societies. It is as if I want to buy a £5 million penthouse around the corner, and I go to the estate agent and say, “I would like to buy it but I don’t have money allocated for it”. There is nothing to cancel.

My Lords, I declare an interest as patron of the King’s Maths School. I thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, who is in her place, for seeing the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and me recently, and for visiting the school. We are most grateful to the Department for Education for agreeing to expand the school. Does the Minister from DSIT agree that one of the best ways to enhance the study of mathematical sciences is to have further university-sponsored maths schools? There are now eight; I believe there are three more opening soon, but we could do more if the Government gave them some more money.

I thank the noble Duke for the question. Maths is now the second most popular subject at A-level; something close to 32% of those taking A-levels are doing maths. We have to encourage young people to take up maths. I was lucky to have a good maths teacher, so I really enjoyed algebra, calculus and so on. It is important that maths graduates go to teach in universities and become good teachers. The Government are investing money to recruit and retain these good teachers, so that maths can be liked by most children across the country.

My Lords, I am very glad that my noble friend the Minister mentioned teachers. We all agree that maths underpins so much of the scientific work and growth on which our country depends, but is he aware that cuts in post-1992 universities are particularly worrying in the maths department, because over three times as many teachers come from post-1992 universities as from the Russell group? Will my noble friend the Minister take time to meet the president of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences, Dame Alison Etheridge? It is very important for the Government to keep in close contact with the scientific bodies that represent mathematics.

My noble friend is absolutely right. Most of the graduates at Russell group universities will probably spend more time doing research than those going to the new universities, where teaching is the main curriculum. Only some 5% of those who go to Russell group universities end up as teachers. We have funding for recruiting teachers but we also need to retain them, which is very important, so the Government have initiatives to retain these teachers.

My Lords, 1.5 million school leavers apply to the Indian Institutes of Technology, the IIT; 130,000 make the first cut and 15,000 get places. These graduates are now running some of the biggest companies in the world. What more can we do to make maths and STEM subjects as popular as they are in India, and get the brightest and the best to go for them? When I was chancellor of the University of Birmingham, we set up a joint AI and data science degree with IIT Madras. Surely we should make many more collaborative degrees like that one.

The noble Lord makes a very interesting point. We have to compete globally for maths graduates, but at the same time we need to have a pipeline of students going through universities, studying maths and coming out to teach it. I will give some figures. We are spending some £233 million to try to recruit teachers, and giving graduates a £25,000 tax-free scholarship to take up teaching. We are spending some £6,000 each to encourage them to stay on as maths teachers.

My Lords, to ensure that the maximum number of people have the potential to study maths, does the Minister accept that at the ages of 15 and 16 they should have not only GCSE maths tuition but the opportunity to study additional maths? That would then open the future of mathematics for them. What will the Government do to try to ensure that we not only keep the teachers we have but add more teachers with a flair for maths to encourage that vital step forward?

The noble Lord makes a very interesting point. We have to get children to be interested in maths, to love maths and not to be scared of maths. We are putting a lot of money towards the various mathematical societies and learned societies. For the maths hubs, we have invested £185 million to get more teachers and students into maths. We have to do more, and we will continue to do more.

My Lords, compared with just one year ago, far more tech leaders are coming to the view that the skill of coding may already be redundant thanks to AI. Whether or not they are right, if we take that as just one example of rapid technology-driven change, does the Minister agree that whatever our plans to develop maths skills, they need to be much more agile and adaptive than they currently are? If so, how can that be brought about?

I thank the noble Viscount for that. I am sure he is aware that DSIT supports STEM talent partners; for example, over £100 million of funding has been committed to quantum skills programmes between 2024 and 2033. Our AI upskilling fund has been providing up to £10,000 for SMEs in the professional and business sector to deliver employee training. Everything has to start from somewhere, so we are spending the money to get people upskilled in the latest technology, whether it is coding or something else.

My Lords, at recent visits to the universities in Cambridge and Manchester, I was shocked to find the huge number of Chinese who are fulfilling special courses on mathematics, quantum and AI. That worried me because I have read reports about a number of them being ex-PLA people. Are we are content with the vast percentage of places being taken in this way, or are we doing something about it?

I thank my noble friend for that. First, it is a myth that all Chinese do maths, because my daughter is not interested in it. Secondly, we have an open university system, so if people want to come to study in this country, whether it is maths or any other science, we should welcome them. We also always need to put in place certain structures to ensure that they are not leaving this country with any sensitive information and technology.