That's the rub, Margaret. They had their curriculum and they were going to teach it, whether it was useful to you or not.

I did calculus at school. As far as I know, I'm the only one from my school contemporaries to ever use it, even though several of us went into mechanics and electrics.

What we really need with maths is a 'basics' course that teaches people most of what they will need to get through their lives. Everything taught also needs to be relatable to daily situations and not imaginative theoretical ones.

Supermarkets get away with murder with their dreadful pricing structures because most people can't work out at the shelf side the best value. This should never be the case.

Rebbonk,, The thing is as you grow older you get along with basic maths .
I think you are correct too in saying that women can feel lack of confidence and feel more insecure about perhaps improving or going back to evening college to take maths again.
I will let you into a secret, forever bug bare of mine , A long way back in my working days, I keenly embarked on a math course but was totally put off by working out relativity, I never saw the reason why they should have that , when all I wanted to do was to do a refresher course in Maths, such as fractions, decimal points, and all that, which I did at a later date. I actually quit that course I started because of the waste of time with relativity!
Perhaps should have met you when I was younger!

Just a thought prompted by the above comments (I too was a school 'failure'), you didn't fail, the school and the system failed you.

Virtually all my adult life I've held supervisory or management positions. I've spent countless hours showing people that they aren't failures and (re)building their confidence. There was always a noticeable difference between men and women. Women were always far more insecure and required more persuading that they were capable. - The whole system stinks!

It's true Lex, the more we help ourselves the better we become. I was uninterested in maths at school due to not getting much help with it. but as I grew older I realised how important maths is in life. It is actually a fascinating subject when you want to take it further and get right down to it. But my efforts with self help was a bit patchy. I'd take up a text book then leave off again. I remember way back when I worked in a restaurant , I amazed myself by adding up peoples bills in my head and got really fast at it, I didn't need a calculator. Ok adding is simple, but the more you use maths the quicker and better, but alas I wish I made more of an effort in my school years. When you get older , you wish your life away all the things that you never did.

I bought myself a 'Maths for Dummies' type book a few years ago, to bring myself up to speed on the subject; it made me realise just how mush I'd worked out for myself over the years because my 'teachers' couldn't be bothered.

It's not just the UK. I've taught maths (particularly statistics) all around the world, and most nations have a very poor grasp of basic maths.

Far too many rely on calculators (mobile phones etc.) these days. - I'd ban them from all maths classes up to GCSE level.

A lot of people had difficulty with numeracy when they were young, but this says a lot about the efficacy of the education system to me: https://rugbyobserver.co.uk/news/free-programme-launched-to-improve-adult-numeracy-in-warwickshire-42914/