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I spotted a T-shirt recently with a message written in a cheerful font that said: “I’m too pretty to do math.”

A slogan like that on a reading or writing theme would cause offence. When it’s about maths, it can still pass as harmless.

I don’t think, though, it’s really an admission of failure on the part of a wearer. Instead, it’s a social strategy. There’s no social cost to saying it, so people say it; the same way we say “I’m rubbish in the kitchen” or “I can’t sing to save my life”.

Nobody says the equivalent about reading, and few adults would casually admit they can’t do it. But maths incompetence has become a bonding mechanism because it can signal warmth and relatability.

This isn’t new, and it isn’t only about T-shirts. In 2015, L’Oréal ran a campaign featuring Helen Mirren with the tagline “Age is just a number and maths was never my thing”.

National Numeracy complained and L’Oréal changed the ad. The fact that it got commissioned in the first place tells you that, culturally, mathematical incompetence was seen as an acceptable association in a beauty campaign.

Most people who say “I’m bad at maths” aren’t being cynical about it. Social habits don’t need to be deliberate to take hold. They just need to work, and this one does.

The gender gap in maths

Part of the reason is the ��of maths competence with innate “natural talent”.

In England, young people aged 10 to 22 widely associate “being good at maths” with “intellectual superiority” and “having a maths brain”.

If maths is talent, not having it costs no more than admitting you’re tone deaf.

There is also a gender dimension worth noting. In our own research, around one in 10 pupils said they thought of people who are good at maths as “usually boys”.

Among more advantaged students, this association halved across Year 7, from 12 per cent to 6 per cent.

Among students facing disadvantage, it barely moved: 10 per cent to 11 per cent. at the highest levels of maths attainment and participation, particularly at A level and in further mathematics, are also a cultural problem.

This has historical roots. British aristocratic culture historically prized classical and literary knowledge - and looked down on applied knowledge and trade.

That hierarchy has fused with 20th-century anti-elitism into a strange position where maths is simultaneously too elite and too grubby to be socially desirable.

Breaking down barriers

Most reform tries to make maths less scary, more accessible, more relevant. I’m not convinced by the relevance argument. Students, particularly high-attaining students, see right through contrived “real-world” framing - football maths, shopping maths, the stereotyped real-world application.

Students know they are being sold something, and it does not change who they believe maths is for. They just want to be taught well.

Our own Year 7 Moment research shows how quickly this identity gap can take hold. We tracked high-attaining students from the end of Year 6 through to the end of Year 7.

They arrived optimistic - 73 per cent said school was fun at the end of Year 6. By the spring term of Year 7, that proportion had fallen to 58 per cent, while reported stress rose from 42 per cent to 50 per cent.

The pattern in maths is sharper. At the end of primary school, high-attaining pupils from less advantaged backgrounds were more likely to say maths lessons were fun than their more advantaged peers.

By the end of Year 7, that had flipped entirely: just 22 per cent of less advantaged students said maths lessons were fun, compared with 52 per cent of more advantaged students.

Building the identity

That’s the point at which “I’m bad at maths” starts to become useful. A student who begins Year 7 curious and open to challenge can, within months, find maths feeling repetitive, exposing, too fast, too slow or socially risky.

Unlike reading, maths offers few social alternatives to retreat to. Reading has book groups, libraries, “What are you reading?” as social currency. Maths weeks and events do exist and they remain important, but we have a long way to go.

Maths circles, the model that Axiom Maths has been running for five years, point to what this could look like. They give students who enjoy a challenge a place to belong.

Granted, one programme cannot shift an identity that is socially rewarded and historically rooted. But it is proof that the middle identity is possible, where you can be good at maths without being a “maths person”.

This is something we can build together as a nation. Until we do, T-shirts like the one I saw will keep selling.

David Thomas is CEO of Axiom Maths

Express your interest in becoming an Axiom Maths partner school in September 2026 by clicking .

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