Using The MathsCareers Website

As a maths teacher, you will often be called upon to provide informal careers advice to a wide range of students.  Can you tackle that often-asked question ‘What’s the Point’?  What would you say to an A Level student who wants to know where a maths degree could lead to?  But more than that – can you incorporate careers into your general teaching?  Showing pupils where maths is used in the real world will not only motivate your students and bring your lessons alive, it will also help give pupils ideas about their future career path. 

The MathsCareers Website

The MathsCareers website is managed by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and has grown to become the most popular maths careers website in the UK.  There are a number of different ways that it can be used by pupils and teachers and here are some ideas to get you started.

1. Boost your careers knowledge

The site tries to answer many of the questions that pupils, teachers and parents are asking.  Questions like ‘Which Degree Courses need A Level Maths?’, ‘Do Mathematicians earn more?’ and ‘Where do Maths Graduates actually work?’.

2. Career Profiles

Maths doesn’t just lead to one destination, it leads to hundreds of different career possibilities which can be surprising to young people who may be thinking about more vocation-based courses.  The MathsCareers website contains a large collection of career profiles of real people working in maths, and taken as a whole, they show that maths leads to an explosion of possibilities.  In these interviews there is also lots of useful advice on the soft skills that pupils will need alongside their mathematical qualifications.

Click here to access the Career Profiles page of the MathsCareers website.

You may even recognise one of the interviewees, the Maths Scholarships very own Project Consultant, Dr Sophie Carr.

3. The latest trends

It is highly likely that many of your pupils will go on to do careers which may not even exist yet. MathsCareers includes information on the important growth areas for maths jobs such as data science or learning a programming language for employability.

4. Applications of maths

MathsCareers also includes hundreds of examples of where maths is used in the real world.  Did you know that maths is being used to develop driverless cars, or to make a perfect cup of coffee? The focus is on making cutting edge applications of maths accessible to everyone. 

5. Competitions

MathsCareers runs two competitions per year, with prizes including Android tablets. Most competitions are based around creating a poster on a relevant theme such as Maths at Work which can easily be done in the classroom or at home. These can be a great way for pupils to do further research and investigate the site themselves.

Click Here to access the Competitions page of the MathsCareers website.

6. Resources

There are also some great careers booklets and posters to download for your classroom; Maths in a Box resources, Posters and Booklets.  

If you can’t print them out, some resources are available upon request. Just send a message through the Contact us page.

7. Link to it

Can you include a link to the MathsCareers website on your departmental homepage?  Promoting the site to your students is a really simple way of raising the profile of careers within your department.  

8. Contribute!

If you have any ideas for articles or resources, or want to contribute a career profile, then please get in touch!

By Hazel Lewis

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