School Gate blog: so what's the best way to help children with their maths?

Children who fail to master basic maths cost society up to £44,000 by their late thirties, a report concludes.

Research by KPMG suggests that innumeracy costs Britain £2.4 billion every year as people fall behind at school and in the workplace.

Children who fail to master basic maths are more likely to truant and be excluded from school, and run a higher risk of being unemployed and being drawn into crime, it says.

The report was commissioned by Every Child a Chance Trust, an educational charity, which says that 30,000 children leave primary school each year unable to do simple calculations.

The report says: “Competent numeracy would appear not only important in relation to employability and the economy, but also as a protective factor in maintaining social cohesion.”

An earlier survey that tested maths skills concluded that 15 million adults have numeracy skills at or below those of an 11-year-old.

The KPMG research said that there was a significant link between poor numeracy and antisocial behaviour, even when other factors were considered. The raw wage premium from having adequate numeracy is greater now than in the early 1990s, according to researchers from the London School of Economics, the report said.

Teenagers who leave school without basic maths cost the taxpayer £1.9 billion a year because of unemployment, the report’s authors calculated. The report said that those costs were incurred by people with numeracy difficulties, but who were competent at reading and writing.

It added: “For all those with numeracy difficulties, the total costs to the public purse arising from the failure to master basic numeracy skills in primary school are estimated at between £4,000 and £44,000 per individual to the age of 37, and between £4,000 and £67,000 over a lifetime.”

The charity is starting a campaign to encourage businesses to help local children with maths problems.

Children will receive maths toolkits that include dice, counters, bead strings, traditional games such as dominoes and snakes and ladders, maths computer games, and CDs of number songs.

John Griffith-Jones, chairman of KPMG and of the trust, said: “Every pound put forward now will save the nation at least £12 later on in reduced crime and unemployment and other savings.”

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