Widening participation in mathematics: an East London perspective

The main goals of the more maths grads project were to encourage more students to take up degree courses in mathematical sciences and to increase the numbers participating from traditionally under-represented groups. In practice we concentrated our efforts on schools and colleges with high proportions of students who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds or who are of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Black Caribbean or Black African ethnicity. The project ran since the summer of 2007 and continued work and dissemination until January 2010. It was managed by the University of Birmingham with three pilot project regions of East London, West Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber. The project officers in these regions were based respectively at Queen Mary, Coventry University and the University of Leeds. The regions worked closely together to ensure that good ideas were tried in several different settings. In London our target boroughs were Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Barking and Dagenham, all of which contain substantial areas of social deprivation. At Queen Mary the more maths grads team consisted of myself and Zia Rahman as project officers and Jenny Allam as administrative assistant. We were supported by Professor David Arrowsmith as Head of the School of Mathematical Sciences and Professor Peter McOwan of the Department of Computer Science. My previous position had been as a postdoctoral researcher in Cambridge, while Zia had been head of mathematics at a large sixth form college in Hackney. In May 2009 my role was taken over by Matt Parker, another mathematics teacher and outreach specialist. Peter McOwan carries out a great deal of outreach work in schools and colleges, especially with his Sodarace and CS4FN projects. We were able to pull our different experiences together and balance supporting existing work in East London with some new ventures.