Maths at Work Day, 18th March 2008

How can pupils see for themselves that mathematics is relevant outside the classroom?  How can they know that what they are doing in lessons will impact on the rest of their working lives?  These are some of the questions which teachers often ask and which we hoped to try to address in our first ever Maths at Work day. 

The result was a hundred pupils interacting with employers from four key sectors over the course of a day at the University of Leeds.  The sectors were diverse, ranging from finance and medical statistics to business and construction.

Pupils discovered how mathematics underpins drug development in a workshop delivered by PSI, an organization representing statisticians in the pharmaceutical industry.  Whereas Kier Northern, a major construction firm gave an insight into three sectors of their business, including an enthusiastically received demonstration of a cutting edge piece of surveying kit.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car also helped pupils to see that good maths skills can add up to good business with a series of real life business case studies which had to be solved in groups.  Forensic Accountant Helen Wainwright and her colleague Alison Ormston from KPMG also got the pupils working in groups, this time on the problem of how to assess a claim from ‘Yummy Chocolate’ when its factory suffered a serious loss through fire.

Overall feedback was good and in the words of one student from Wetherby High School: ‘I’ve realized that maths is used in all types of work and it can be interesting’.  Hopefully we’ll hear more comments of this kind when we hold two more Maths at Work days in the Summer Term.

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