A shortage of qualified maths teachers and poor teaching is failing secondary school pupils, a new report claims.

Education watchdog Ofsted found that a lack of well trained maths teachers left some groups to be taught by non-specialists.

The regulatory body reported that many lessons “lacked sufficient flair, imagination and challenge to get the best from students.”

They did not train the students to develop their “ability to reason and discover solutions for themselves,” it claimed.

In some GCSE lessons they were given “incorrect, incomplete, inappropriate or misleading information.”

Miriam Rosen, Ofsted director of education, said: “The current approach to teaching mathematics is not giving students the understanding they require and this must change.”

Schools minister Jim Knight said that the standard of training and development for teachers had improved.

“For the first time in a generation we are exceeding the target for recruiting maths teachers, we are ensuring there are more maths specialists in the classroom and raising the standards of teaching through improved professional development.”