Making it Count: Key Findings from the Lords Numeracy for Life Committee 

Earlier this week, the House of Lords Numeracy for Life Committee published its final report, Making it Count: Numeracy for Life. The report gives a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities for numeracy across the life course, from the early years through to working life and late career. Many of its themes relate closely to our own work, and the Committee draws on the findings of our report Count on It: AI, Numeracy and Social Mobility, published earlier this year in partnership with National Numeracy. 

As numeracy receives growing policy attention, and ahead of forthcoming government reviews including the Milburn Review and the next stage of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, this piece summarises the report’s key findings and considers the priorities for next steps. 

Numeracy rates 

The report begins by recognising the progress made in recent years. PIAAC data show the proportion of adults with low numeracy fell from 25% to 14% between 2012 and 2023, while England rose from 27th in 2009 to 10th in PISA 2025. However, these gains are uneven. Improvement has been driven mainly by 16 to 24-year-olds, while the skills of the lowest achievers “have not improved at all”. Around 16 million adults still have low numeracy skills, 8 million of them below the level expected of a nine-year-old, and the report cites National Numeracy’s finding that socio-economic background is the primary indicator of low numeracy.  

Beyond skills and ability, the report highlights challenges with confidence. It cites PISA findings that 40% of students feel nervous, helpless or anxious in everyday maths situations, and evidence from Professor Hannah Fry that a dislike for maths rises from about 23% at age 10 to 50% at age 14. Our own report, Count on It, also highlighted the scale of low numeracy and, going beyond the Committee’s findings, identified a further risk linked to artificial intelligence (AI). We found that where people routinely rely on AI for tasks requiring numeracy, the skills needed to assess its outputs may weaken, increasing reliance on the tools over time. While the evidence is still emerging, we concluded that this risk warrants deliberate policy attention. 

Challenges and recommendations across the life course 

The report shows that challenges with numeracy begin in the early years (ages 0 to 5). Written evidence from the Early Childhood Maths Group demonstrated disadvantaged children start school 4.7 months behind their peers, and parents report reading with young children five to seven times a week but engaging in number play only once a week. The Committee’s recommendations for this stage centre on giving numeracy equal status with literacy, including adding numeracy to parental guidance and Best Start hubs, and continuing to fund training for early years practitioners. 

For the school years (ages 5 to 16), the report identifies teacher capacity, late identification of difficulties and under-recognition of dyscalculia as key challenges. These issues have featured across our own work. In Count on It, for example, we highlighted the limited capacity and training available for teachers to strengthen both their maths confidence and their AI literacy. This section of the report also sets out the importance of numeracy for AI preparedness. Quoting Count on It, the Committee notes that “information is not the same as insight”, and concludes that AI makes numeracy more important, not less, because people need to question and sense-check automated outputs. This reflects a central argument of our report, that using AI critically requires an understanding of how it works, which in turn depends on strong numerical skills.  

The Committee’s recommendations for this stage focus on the teaching workforce and earlier support, including sustained investment in specialist teachers and maths hubs, a pilot Year 8 diagnostic assessment, dyscalculia training, a National Year of Numeracy, and evaluation of AI tutoring tools. Count on It builds on this by recommending that critical AI literacy and key numeracy skills are embedded as named components of formal education at school and post-16 level, and that teachers are equipped with both AI literacy and numeracy skills. In line with the Committee’s call to evaluate AI tutoring tools, we also recommended that the Department for Education set requirements for AI tools used in schools to support active numerical engagement, beginning with the procurement specifications for its AI tutoring programme. 

For young adults (ages 16 to 19), the report focusses on what the Committee describes as “a growing and dispiriting spiral of re-sits”. In 2026, 71.8% of 16-year-olds achieved grade 4 or above in GCSE maths, but only one in seven (15%) of those resitting passed. This is a challenge we explored in Earning or Learning, the Skills Commission’s report on reducing the number of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET). Our inquiry found that not having Level 2 qualifications is the biggest predictor of whether a young person will become NEET, with Welsh Government research finding that young people who do not achieve Level 2 at Key Stage 4 are almost ten times more likely to become NEET than those who do. We argued that this reflects a system in which accessible alternatives are scarce once the GCSE threshold has been missed.  

We recommended that every further education college and relevant provider offer funded foundation and Level 1 to 2 vocational routes that integrate flexible English and maths provision, including Functional Skills and contextualised learning, so that a lack of GCSEs does not become a hard barrier to progression. The Committee reaches a similar conclusion, arguing that Level 2 maths should not become an indefinite barrier to education, training or work. Its recommendations aim to make post-16 routes clearer and better targeted, including a framework explaining what each qualification is for, raising the profile of Functional Skills, basing resits on readiness and diagnostic information, and making numeracy explicit in apprenticeships and occupational standards. 

Finally, for the working years (ages 19 and over), the report identifies the lack of a single route through which adults’ numeracy needs are identified and addressed. As in Count on It, the Committee highlights the positive impact of Multiply, where 58% of learners went on to further learning, but criticises the absence of any evaluation of skills gains. Its recommendations seek to create a coherent adult pathway, including a ministerial owner and cross-government strategy, provision that is “nationally guaranteed but locally delivered”, and a “no wrong door” approach through jobcentres, healthcare, and housing services. This section also discusses AI and digital preparedness, though it stops short of making recommendations in this area. In our own work, we noted some of the challenges employees face in building confidence with AI, such as concerns about job displacement, and again highlighted the importance of numerical skills and technical understanding in supporting confidence and adaptability across the workforce. 

What comes next 

The Government’s response to the report is expected in early 2027, alongside further work on implementing the Curriculum and Assessment Review and the Milburn Review in the coming months. We hope the Committee’s recommendations on raising numeracy levels are taken forward and integrated into these upcoming plans, and that numeracy is increasingly considered alongside AI and digital preparedness. 

These themes will also feature in much of our upcoming work. Through the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Data and Emerging Technology (APGDET), we will be assessing AI preparedness and digital literacy. In our upcoming inquiry into apprenticeships, we will consider the role apprenticeships could play in raising baseline skills such as numeracy. Through the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Skills, Careers and Employment (APGSCE), we will continue to make the case for adult skills in our upcoming programme. 

To hear more or get involved in our work, contact Rhiannon Tuckett-Jones at (rhiannon.tuckett-jones@policyconnect.org.uk).