Number Confidence needs to include parents too

Earlier this week, I was delighted to be part of the launch of a great report produced by Barclays with National Numeracy. Their ‘Nurturing number confidence’ report was launched at an event in the House of Lords, bringing together Barclays UK CEO Vim Maru, Kirstie Mackey OBE, MD of Citizenship for the UK & Europe at Barclays and Kitty Usher MD of Policy Development, with National Numeracy CEO Sam Sims all kicked off by Darren Paffey MP.  

The Barclays research has dug into number confidence and the relationship between parental number confidence and what that can mean for supporting and motivating their children to themselves get confidence with numbers. This research found that 16% of parents say they have low confidence with using numbers in everyday life which broadly translates to potentially 2.1 million children having a parent with low numeracy confidence. 

It's a great read but also a positive one, with practical solutions and recommendations that can really help - for example having a National Year of Numeracy, just as we’re currently having a National Year of Literacy. The report also emphasises that having more collective community focus on numeracy can help parents and children too.   

A key point in the report was that making numeracy fun outside of school can be a powerful way of building confidence - it mentions games like Monopoly or Payday and others as a way of families helping children improve their numeracy. It really resonated with me, because as a child in primary school, I found maths hard - I wasn't especially keen at adding up numbers, but I loved playing Monopoly, adding up the money in the game, working out if it was worth buying all the different properties (Favourites: Bow St, Marlborough St and Vine St!).  

One of the other recommendations was helping parents understand how maths is taught in schools so they can better help their children at home.  

This report underlines that we use numbers all the time, whether it's working out the fastest route into work, of how long before our next meeting, or playing games. 

More broadly, number confidence matters hugely for social mobility, whether enabling us to get in control on our own finances or feeling like we're able to make those bigger financial decisions on things like mortgages or pensions. It's also crucial for opening up the opportunity to start your own business.  

I hope the report’s policy recommendations can be taken forward in Parliament. It was great to see Nick Smith MP, Baroness Sandy Verma, Baroness Sater and Lord Mohammed there too. The launch of this report is an important step. The challenge now is to use its insights and recommendations to drive real change. If we do, we can help ensure that confidence with numbers becomes a bridge to opportunity rather than a barrier to it. 

- Rt Hon Justine Greening