Mayor’s Fund in three-year programme to boost maths

A London-wide maths competition for primary school children and after-school arithmetic clubs are to be launched as part of a bid to boost numeracy levels in the capital, it was announced today.

The three-year Count On Us campaign, funded by the Mayor’s Fund for London, aims to appoint dedicated “Maths Champions” to schools in the city as well encourage parents to work with their children on numeracy skills and convince youngsters that the subject is “cool”. One in six children in London leaves primary school without passing the maths test at the level expected of them and a recent study found that 17 million adults in the UK have numeracy skills below those needed for the lowest grade at GCSE.

Mayor’s Fund chief executive Matthew Patten said: “I was very concerned that so many children leave school with maths skills below where they should be, especially when you look at the links with unemployment, disadvantage and even things like teenage pregnancy.”