Rishi is wrong. Maths isn’t missing from children’s education, RE is

The prime minister has called for all pupils in England to study some form of maths up until the age of 18. But Rev George Pitcher believes education should help children to understand the world they live in – and numbers can only go so far in doing that

I want to mount a case for religious education being as important as maths, which prime minister Rishi Sunak wants taught better and longer in schools. First, to a maths lesson.

Nearly 60 years ago, a maths teacher called Major James kept me in from cricket practice to learn to do long division. I sucked my pencil and stared at the exercises he’d set me. And I devised my own way of doing it.