Rishi Sunak wants all pupils to study maths to age 18

In the UK children do some GCSE subject around age 14 to 16. They get some choice of subjects such as choosing geography or history.

At 16, they have options. They can stay at school and do some A-level subjects of their choice. They can leave school and do whatever they want.

16 year olds can join the army, they can do a vocational course such as learning to be a cook, baker or a bricklayer. They can get a full time job, which in practise often means working for a family business because not many employers want 16 year olds.

Teenagers doing A-levels have a wide range of math knowledge. Some of them dozed through gcse math lessons and got a very low grade. Some of them learned geometry, probability and basic statistics.

One teacher trying to teach twenty teenagers who don't want to be there and where some can't add up three digit numbers and some can do algebra will be ineffective.

Children over 16, and their parents, can't be criminally charged or fined for truancy. Schools can threaten to throw them out, but the schools get money for each pupil.

There is not much you can do if 16 years old just don't turn up for math class.

If you tell the teenagers that hate math that they have to keep doing it if they stay at school age 16 to 18 then more of them will leave.

Wonder what the earliest age is to have Euclid well understood in competition.

Some kids realize they are smarter than their maths teacher before age 18.