WHEN Rishi Sunak gives up politics, which will probably be a whole lot sooner than he plans, there is a position he can walk straight into as he matches the job description perfectly.

Judging by his hare-brained scheme to inflict maths on every English child until they are 18, he is a shoo-in to be the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as he doesn’t seem to like like kids much either.

Rather than entice them into his cage with ice cream and lollipops as in the film, Rishi’s child catcher would try and lure them with calculus books and the promise of never ending simultaneous equations.

Come on now Rishi, have the young team today not suffered enough in recent years without throwing this at them too?

To be fair, the PM looks like he knows his way round a scientific calculator and probably took great pride showing off his impeccable workings while he was at school.

But maths is not for everybody, in fact it is like Marmite in that you either love or you hate it – there is no middle ground for either.

Mr Sunak is looking at plans to ensure all pupils in England study maths in some form until the age of 18.

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It comes as the number of 16 to 18-year-olds is projected to rise by a total of 18% between 2021 and 2030 and the PM says the UK must “reimagine our approach to numeracy”.

He added: “In a world where data is everywhere and statistics underpin every job, our children’s jobs will require more analytical skills than ever before. And letting our children out into the world without those skills, is letting our children down”.

The logic behind his plan is absolutely fair until you take into account that a lot of pupils simply don’t understand maths – never did and never will.

Maths to them is pointless and I write as someone who failed virtually every maths exam I ever sat. I simply could not get it and I never have. Like many pupils, my forte was subjects such as Geography, History, Geology and English, whereas Maths and Physics left me completely baffled. They still do.

I could never understand why simultaneous equations suddenly threw in letters to work out – if x = y then what is a? Unless you instinctively get maths, such as Einstein or Rishi Sunak, then it just looks confusing. Logically, X cannot possibly equal Y in any form – one is the 24th letter of the alphabet and the other is the 25th.

They should really only be seen together if you play the xylophone or you’re going for an x-ray – they have absolutely no place on a maths paper whatsoever.

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What would happen if literary classics suddenly started throwing in numbers halfway down a page? There would be absolute chaos and English exams would take on a whole new meaning.

Obviously, maths is extremely useful in certain profession such as rocket science, civil engineering and architecture – but the vast majority of people can do very well in life without being good at maths.

I marvel at the engineering greatness of the Forth Bridge and other great structures but I have no desire to find out how it was built – I’m happy just to look at it in wonderment and praise the builders, all of whom are far cleverer than me .

Another subject I didn’t get at all at school was Physics – it baffled me almost as much as Maths.

I have absolute respect for the great physicists of the past such as Einstein, Newton, Faraday and Rutherford but I don’t want to be like them.

They have all created formulas that help make the world still go round today and I’m happy to take their words for it – I really don’t need to know how to replicate it.

When I watch replays of the late, great Pele, I’m happy just to watch. I don’t feel the need to work out the joules of energy created by a header or a flick over the head any more than I need to know the angle the ball went in or the velocity of the shot.

What made learning it worse was it was accompanied by a textbook called Physics is Fun. With due respect to the author, it should have been impounded by trading standards and burnt for breaching every trades description law ever passed.

It was the first book covered with wallpaper, just so I could hide the title. Physics is not fun and never will be.

But the PM does have a point in wanting numeracy rates to improve and a desire to modernise the school curriculum to make lessons more relevant to the new jobs market.

More maths is not the answer though – it actually sounds more like a stiff sentence passed down in court.