The tutor says 70% of pupils do not have maths beyond GCSE and some of these are not the higher level of the qualification.
"Too much time spent looking at the quality of school lunches and not enough on maths and English, " Sir Michael said.
She points to research by King's College in London which finds a 16-year-old's understanding of maths today is not as good as it was in the 1970s.
In maths and science boys and girls perform much the same at primary school, but at age 15 boys do rather better than girls in maths (though not science).
The authors say that rather than making the qualification compulsory the challenge is to provide a "clear and attractive alternative" for students who achieve good grades in GCSE maths but do not currently go on to study AS or A-level mathematics.
But the same data did not give the overall figures for maths, science and English teacher posts.
National Numeracy plans ultimately to extend the scheme to improve maths standards among people not in employment or education.
They say their data therefore show that improvements in maths scores are related not to economic development, but directly to improvements in the social position of women.
Researchers can upload maths and physics papers that have not (yet) been published in journals.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh said under new plans, entrants would need qualifications in English, maths and a language, but not science.
'We're just not producing enough graduates with computer science or maths skills.
But in more equal societies, not only were the girls as good at maths as the boys, their advantage in reading had increased.
The results, based on test performances of samples of 9, 13 and 17 year olds, suggest that apart from maths, average school standards have not risen since the early 1990s.
"The same head introduced 'Wow Wednesdays", he said, "where you let your hair down", but one pupil had arrived at a maths lesson and said he was not doing it because of that.
Learning maths, indeed any subject, must not be a treadmill of revision and exams.
BBC: Rushed maths leads to 'superficial' learning, report says
He calls for the apprentice's accomplishments to be robustly tested and validated, and says they must include high quality attainments in maths and English for those who have not got GCSEs in the subjects before they start.
It is hard to see the system being both tougher and more appealing: making difficult subjects like maths compulsory may encourage a few borderline students not to give them up.
And it has said from September, teenagers will keep studying maths until they are 18 if they have not passed a GCSE in the subject at grade C or above.
Almost one in four (23.1%) maths teachers - around 7, 500 - do not have a relevant degree-level qualification, along with a fifth (20.1%) of English teachers - around 7, 300 in total.
"It may not be appropriate to use calculators for the whole of the maths test paper, but it is a retrograde step to ban them completely as it will diminish the skills set for primary pupils and leave them floundering in secondary school".
With only about 60% of 16-year-olds currently achieving the government's benchmark of five good GCSE passes including English and maths, it is clear many young people might not have passed the EBCs, which were being presented as more demanding than the current exams.
The maths is that simple, even if the conclusion is not what we want to hear.
Ministers also said it was not acceptable that childcare professionals are not required to have at least GCSE grade C in English and maths.
In other words, "I wouldn't expect my daughter to be any good at maths because I wasn't any good" might not be just a matter of poor parental attitude.
Published in November, the review by former college principal Huw Evans said some employers and universities do not think that a grade C at GCSE English, Welsh and maths is a reliable indicator of literacy and numeracy skills.
And that's not all, you've still got your history, and your maths to catch up on!
The rise in female reading scores alongside their maths scores suggests that female comparative advantage in this area has not changed.
The government has already said it intends to make maths study compulsory to the age of 18 for students who have not achieved a grade C or above at GCSE.
The study's authors said they did not know why this was the case, but suggested employers seemed to value maths skills and were willing to reward them with higher wages.
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