Mothers pass on maths anxiety to kids, survey by Rishi Sunak’s UK charity finds

London, Jan 11 (PTI) Mothers tend to pass on their own anxiety over mathematics to their daughters, creating a gender gap of confidence in the subject over time, new research by an education charity set up by former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty has discovered.

The findings of the survey by the Richmond Project, reported in ‘The Sunday Times’ ahead of its official publication next week, reveal that girls become less confident and hence less able in maths from the age of eight.

It found that 51 per cent of boys aged four to eight thought that maths was “easy” compared with 41 per cent of girls. This gap widened over time, with 86 per cent of boys aged nine to 18 saying they were confident in the subject compared with 63 per cent of girls.

“Our survey shows, if they are parents, women tend to struggle more with helping children with their maths homework compared to men. And so that goes on and on,” Murty told the newspaper.

“There is this anxiety that women feel more so than men. I’m not saying men don’t feel it at all, but women tend to feel it more and that translates intergenerationally.

“If a young girl sees her mother feeling anxious then she subconsciously buys into that anxiety. So I think that’s how that cycle goes on and on,” she said.

Murty, daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty, pointed to her own strong role models in STEM – science, technology, engineering and maths – from an early age. While her mother trained as an engineer, the 45-year-old said she also grew up with aunts who were “science people.” “Our whole mission is how do we transform people’s lives using number skills,” she said, with reference to the Richmond Project – named after Sunak’s North Yorkshire constituency.

“We are really passionate about saying use numbers in your day-to-day life, whether that is indeed planning your weekly shopping, cooking and recipes, whether that is figuring out train timetables, bus timetables, thinking of splitting a bill,” she said.

Murty told the newspaper that maths needs to be decoded from some “abstract” concept to something to be deployed “in very practical ways.” It is something she ensures her teenage daughters, Krishna and Anoushka, have grown up with.

“Maths is problem-solving. We tend to love puzzles as a family. When they were younger, we loved jigsaw puzzles. Now that they’re older, we do everything from Wordle to crossword puzzles,” she said.

Her charity's study surveyed 8,000 adults on their maths confidence alongside a series of numeracy questions. It found that women were nearly twice as likely as men to feel anxious or overwhelmed when handling numbers and, in the workplace, only 43 per cent of women said they enjoyed using numbers compared with 61 per cent of men.

Murty feels this “stark” difference in enjoyment of maths as children went through primary school and continued into adulthood.

The Richmond Project, set up after Sunak moved to backbenches of Parliament as an Opposition Tory MP in July 2024, aims to break down barriers and build confidence in numbers across all ages. PTI AK NPK NPK