Hampstead Secondary School in Westbere Road

MATHS is booming at A-level as more students pick up their calculators to learn crucial problem solving skills that are “highly transferable” to “any field”. But more work is needed to encourage girls to take the subject.

Mathematics displaced English as the most popular A-level subject in 2014 and retained the crown last year. In January, prime minister Rishi Sunak announced his plans to make studying maths in some way up to the age of 18 compulsory.

But that incentive isn’t needed at Hampstead School, where maths “has been the most popular subject”.

This year 50 pupils out of a cohort of 200 took the subject as an A-level.

Maths teacher and Key Stage 5 coordinator Parsa Hassan-Yazdi, who grew up in Camden, said: “There’s a lot of interest. This year we had our highest intake for Further Maths in quite a while – 12 students including five girls, which for Further Maths is quite a lot.

“Usually we have five or six students.  The most valuable aspect of maths at that level is the problem-solving element to it. That’s why you have students interested in law, computing, medicine still interested in doing A-level maths. I think it’s transferable to any field.”

Still not everyone takes naturally to numeracy.

Mr Hassan-Yazdi explained teaching the reasoning behind rules makes it more engaging, easier to understand, and is ultimately one of the reasons why he wanted to become a teacher.  He said: “You need to be careful with how you teach it. You can get away with saying you need to remember this rule or that rule but I don’t think it’s sustainable to rely on rote learning. We’re preparing learners so they can apply their understanding in unfamiliar situations. Math is all about pattern spotting.

“If they can learn pattern spotting, reasoning, and logic they are likely to be successful later.”

While he hasn’t noticed fewer girls taking the subject in his four years of teaching, he said the gender imbalance has been there.

The teachers are focused on improving girls’ confidence in the subject. For example last year they distributed mini whiteboards to everyone in class so they can work on a difficult problem without committing to pen and paper first. They’ve also started lunchtime puzzle clubs and extracurricular maths challenges.