Community group gains funding to help with maths skills

Access to Business from Wolverhampton is among four of the most recently funded organisations that the WMCA is working with to help identify residents who would benefit from numeracy support.

The organisations have been granted a total of £150,581 by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) to employ ‘Numeracy Champions’ to deliver training and support for employed adults as part of the government funded Multiply programme aiming to improve maths skills across the region.

Each organisation will act as an advocate for Multiply, employing a ‘Numeracy Champion’ to develop and deliver a learning programme and to engage with residents to promote the benefit of enhanced numeracy skills and qualifications.

Learning and Work Institute, using OECD's adult basic skills survey, shows that an estimated 440,000 adults (24.1%) in the WMCA area have low literacy or numeracy skills.

The government has put in £17 million funding into the Multiply programme since 2022 - an innovative approach that aims to boost adults’ confidence with numbers and maths from budgeting to cooking and in turn improve their career prospects, support family learning and help them to get new qualifications and better manage their finances.

Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands and WMCA Chair, said: “It’s great news that we’ve been able to fund four voluntary and community sector organisations to support the delivery of the Multiply programme.

“With more than £150,000 of WMCA funding on the table, we know this support will help residents including Michelle to become more confident with numbers in everyday life and more adept in managing finances.

“The Multiply programme is a practical way we can work together to help local people to develop flexible and transferable numeracy skills that they can apply in their jobs and day to day lives for many years to come. I cannot wait to see the results and I’m glad we’ve been able to play our part by funding this initiative.”

Further opportunities for the voluntary and community sector to apply for Multiply delivery grants will be made available by the end of 2023.

Simon Moore, operations manager, Access to Business, said: "We are thrilled to be delivering the Multiply Small Grant programme, enabling us to support local part-time working or zero-hour contract residents across our city to improve their maths skills to help them to progress their careers.

“Our experienced maths tutor has developed programmes that will be offered across our city in a welcoming and supportive environment.

"We are already seeing great demand from local schools and employers to support part-time working parents who will then not only improve their own maths skills but also support their children and other family members too."

Learning and feedback from each of the Multiply programmes will be used to inform future policy and developments in numeracy improvement in the future.

An overview of the WMCA regional focus of Multiply can be found at wmca.org.uk/documents/ukspf/ukspf-presentation/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-presentation-june-2022/multiply/focus-of-regional-activity