Are your Maths Skills up to Scratch on National Numeracy Day?
Awards International
An initiative led by KPMG, the day seeks to bring members of the public together with employers and teachers to improve numeracy skills across the UK and echoes Moneywise’s long-standing campaign to Get Financial Education Working.
From getting the best deal when we’re shopping to managing family finances and understanding our pay slips, numeracy skills are an important part of daily life.
However, despite this, the organisers of National Numeracy Day claim half of working adults have the equivalent numeracy skills of a primary school child.
The best time to learn about personal finance and how to manage money is as a child in school. Yet with financial education only featuring on the perimeter of the national curriculum for secondary school children, the provision remains patchy and ad hoc.
A lot of people are put off maths by methods that seem arbitrary – “just divide this by that”, or “put the numbers into this formula”.
All of us (including professional mathematicians) learn and remember best when approaches make sense. Take the time to talk about maths, and figure out why things work.
In the meantime, you can find out how your number skills stack up with the National Numeracy Day quiz – and if you don’t do as well as you would hope, get some tips on how to beef up your maths ability.
Thomas Fairbairn
Sandra Radlovacki
Emilija Vacev
Marijana Vitas
Aleksandar Ilic
Rodney Laws
Neil Skehel
Gill Tiney
Paul Blunden
Jovana Bošnjak
Robert Allcock
Donna O’Toole