Shropshire girls 'just as good as boys at maths'

It follows claims made by one of the country's top businesswomen that sexist attitudes had led to a slump in the number of girls taking maths and physics at A-level.

Martha Lane Fox, millionaire founder of lastminute.com, said the lack of women taking technical subjects was "terrifying" for Britain and creating a worsening skills shortage which is putting the UK behind developing countries such as China. "Fewer girls are doing maths, physics and computer subjects at school," she said. "There's this assumption that that's not what women do – and that's absolute nonsense."

A report by the Institute of Physics showed that between 2010 and 2012, two thirds of pupils taking A-level maths were male, while four times more boys than girls studied physics.

But today school heads across Shropshire said they were making a concerted effort to get more girls to study maths .

Candy Garbett, headmistress of The Priory School in Shrewsbury, said girl pupils were beginning to realise how much studying maths can benefit them. "It's not considered creative and that's always been a problem that will only change if you challenge it through education," she said. "Often children are told that mum or dad couldn't do maths, and that's why they can't do it.

"It's particularly like that with girls, because you have mum or grandma, or auntie, and before you know it girls are getting told it's okay not to be good at maths."

Ms Garbett has been running a series of maths workshops for the past three years and believes her female pupils are now overachieving in maths GCSE in comparison to boys.

"My girls are starting to realise that maths will benefit them in the future, in business and with working with people," she added.

Dr Simon Burrows, head of maths at Adams Grammar school in Newport, said he believed girls struggled more with stereotyping than adding up. He said: "Society tends to think maths is male orientated but it is important not to stereotype as this can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Many historically famous mathematicians are male but this could be because males had more opportunities to study maths than females due to the way society was organised ."

Adams Grammar currently has 68 girls in its sixth form. Just over half are studying maths, and Dr Burrows believes expectations based on gender are slowly beginning to change.

Kenneth Smith, head of maths at The Marches School in Oswestry, said more than half of the students studying maths at A-level are female. He said: "A lack of confidence and lower expectations are certainly not traits witnessed in girls here. In contradiction to the report, 64 per cent of students studying A-level maths in the sixth form are high-flying, academic girls, many of whom are considering pursuing the subject further, beyond sixth form."