Numeracy Introduction
Adults with strong numeracy skills have better health, stronger and more varied employment prospects, higher earnings, easier access to training opportunities and to higher level qualifications, and better access to good housing. Carpentieri, J. D. and Litster, J. (NRDC 2009)
Changing attitudes is central to NIACE's work. Adults often think they are bad at maths or that it's not relevant to their lives.
"People who work out complicated bets in their head often call it common sense, not maths; they keep the "maths" word for things they can't do. Many of us have a very narrow range of what we call maths but it can be a very creative subject." Joan O'Hagan, an associate of the NCETM
Over the last two years, NIACE has developed and delivered ‘Maths Messenger' sessions in community settings for intermediaries who can influence adults' attitudes towards maths learning. The sessions are fun and engaging and enable participants to review their own attitudes towards maths and experiences of learning maths; take part in fun and stimulating activities that they can take away and use to inspire others to take up maths learning.
Over the last year, we have worked with unionlearn to make maths more exciting and accessible to more people in the workplace. This has included delivering Maths Messenger sessions across the country to over 100 ULRs, learning co-ordinators and Union Learning Centre Managers and developing a joint website, www.maths4us.org . We are currently producing a booklet for intermediaries that includes key information about the benefits of maths learning and a series of case studies featuring people who have successfully improved their maths.