The National Audit Office has officially congratulated the Government on the achievement of its 2004 and 2007 Skills for Life targets and says it is well on the way to achieving the 2010 target too. This is good news.
Personally I would thank the Government a bit less and instead heap praise on the LSC, learning providers, community and voluntary groups and individuals who have delivered those achievements. I would also praise the individuals who overcame barriers of all sorts to improve their basic skills - be that finding the time to do the learning, making that first scary step into a college or provider, or even more daringly, admitting to someone that they needed help with something as fundamental as literacy skills.
I pick out literacy skills because that is where the main achievements have been made and where the most progress and impact has come from. A further swathe of learners will have achieved English as a Second or Other Language qualifications, enabling them to function better in British society. Where the policy has almost failed however, is to improve the numeracy skills of the adult population - the scale of the problem is greater, but to date the impact has been less.
In part, this has to be laid at the feet of a society where it is acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths". I would be mortified to say that but I do remember class mates at school saying that, and the easiest way to get people off a business studies degree is to face them with a pretty basic quantitative methods paper, which many fail because it's numbers, and answers are right or wrong, though you can get the odd mark for getting a method right.
Another key reason is the way maths is often presented as a scary separate subject rather than integral to life as we know it. Construction courses include maths for calculations for how much plaster or tiles to cover a wall, mechanics courses include maths in terms of quantities of lubricants and mixes of washes and anti-freeze, cookery is all about measurement and proportion, even art and drawing includes geometry and proportion. The more obvious subjects such as economics, accountancy, management all need a good grasp of numbers and what they mean. While betting slips, the pools, darts and football all bring a certain need for arithmetic and statistics, God's own game of cricket has inspired some of the most complex mathematical modelling that the man in the street will encounter.
So why is it acceptable to say you are no good at numbers? Grab life, your leisure time, your finances and your work and take pride in being able to do maths.
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