Number Confidence Week - being more confident with maths matters to all of us

It’s great that the Curriculum Review launched by the DfE earlier this week includes recommendations to improve financial literacy. Feeling in control of our finances and understanding the maths in situations we face in our everyday lives is a hugely important part of the solution on social mobility and in turn, a way we can help drive economic growth. 

The reality is that, for too many of us, a lack of confidence in our ability to do maths and concern over money management are challenges that really hold us back in our lives. In fact, research by Barclays found that two in five adults leave school believing they aren’t good at maths, with all the implications for financial resilience and ability to access to finance for those people’s lives. 

And lots of us struggle with maths at school – I certainly did. My initial experience learning maths at primary school was that it was hard to make sense of it. How all the calculation rules worked seemed really complicated to me. Worse, it was hard to guess the answers if you didn’t know them. Numbers were right or wrong, so there was nowhere to hide when you didn’t know. I have memories of having to stay in during breaktime after a maths lesson to finish off the exercise everyone else had already done. It wasn’t a great start. If you’d told the 10-year-old version of myself that I’d become an accountant working in finance with numbers at the heart of my career, and even a Treasury Minister, I’d have said it was impossible.  

And yet during secondary school, with the help of great teachers, I found maths starting to make more sense, I began – surprisingly to myself – even enjoying it. Bit by bit, my confidence grew.  

It underlines that confidence in maths doesn’t always happen easily, even for those of us who end up with numbers playing a central role in our career. Many of us are on a journey in our relationship with numbers. But getting to a good place on maths is crucial if we’re to thrive in our adult lives. 

That's why National Numeracy’s Number Confidence Week matters, because it’s a chance to refocus on this topic. It's even better that it comes in a week when the Government itself is taking some important steps forward in the right direction. It's great to see a business like Barclays, part of The Purpose Coalition, using its scale to really make a difference on this agenda. Engaging with schools across the country as well as with adults, it can play a key role in helping us all to develop more confidence about numbers and money.

It’s right to recognise that the relationship with money begins in childhood too. Let’s hope that alongside the efforts by the National Numeracy charity, Barclays with its Life Skills programme, which over 90% of secondary schools have signed up to, and so many others, we can see this year’s Number Confidence Week as a real turning point for the better.  

-Rt Hon Justine Greening, Chair of The Purpose Coalition