Opinion: Failing attitudes are a challenge to us all

Not easy, perhaps, but a systematic challenge that we might suppose was within the boundaries of competence of many, if not most, 15-year-olds.

Not for the lad concerned. In his final year of compulsory schooling he was unable to read the text. He had no conception of multiplication, division, addition or subtraction. What he wanted to know was which button he should press on the calculator and which numbers he should punch in. His concentration, if you can call it that, lapsed about five times a minute; each time he was prone to give up in an explosion of frustration. When it came to percentages he was completely lost. We got there in the end, and he did seem to get some hang of the idea of percentages, but he remained completely nonplussed about the gas bill. Even when I simplified the challenge, he still had to use the calculator to add 20 and 10.