£800 million a year!! That’s how much the UK is losing due to a poor knowledge of simple maths.

According to a recent report by learndirect; ‘£823 million is lost each year due to inadequate basic skills - enough to pay the starting salaries of more than 40,000 new teachers. ‘

The most interesting results of their survey of 1000 people found:

‘One in five say they cannot convert local currency into pounds while on holiday; more than a third admit to adding up on their fingers when they have no calculator one in five do not know the difference between words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as “there” and “their”; two thirds rely completely on a spellchecker at work; 40% cannot calculate volume; and a third find converting fractions to decimals very difficult. ‘

The bit I’ve emboldened is one of my pet hates and surprisingly common! There’s nothing wrong with using a spell checker but to what extent do people rely on them? How much can they not spell?

It just goes to show the importance of the three ‘R’s, both my father and my grandfather repeatedly spoke of the neccesity for a sound knowledge of:

Reading

Riting

&

‘Rithmatic!