Numeracy for Life Committee — hearing of 2 July 2026: transcript & video

00:00 - 00:51

Speaker 1

Welcome everybody to this new next session of Numeracy for Life and we're very happy, pleased to welcome Rishi Sunak and his team from the Richmond Project who are campaigning for maths and numeracy education. So very closely aligned to what we're also looking into. So thank you very much. All three of you do feel free to come in on on answers, but but don't get too overly voluble in your answers so we can get through the questions that we have put and you've seen the questions and and there'll be some free form. So so just to really to open the batting, Rishi, would you just like to tell us a little about about the Richmond Project and and what drove you to set it up and and your your key objectives?

00:51 - 03:07

Speaker 4

Well, well firstly, Chair, thank you so much for having us today and inviting the Richmond Project team and thank you to the committee for your focus on this issue. Obviously we're passionate about it, but a committee with your weight and standing focusing on the issue, publishing findings, I think will do wonders for the debate and raising awareness. So I appreciate the effort and time that you've shown. Um, my wife Akshata and I started the Richmond Project last year, a charity whose mission is to improve social mobility through education and specifically via numeracy. And we did that because we believe if if people have more skill and confidence with numbers, then that will open doors for them at school, at home, at work and in their general lives.

Uh, and and in doing that, ultimately, hopefully be able to transform people's lives. The first piece of work we did last year was a very deep research project into the country's attitudes and attainment with numeracy, I think the largest study of its kind which we did with King's University and Public First. Uh, and it showed actually in a in a quite quite uh in heartened fashion, you know, the vast majority, 90% of the country think that this is really important. And actually would would like to improve as well, but it also highlighted that there is a challenge. You know, 40% of the country doesn't have strong numeracy, so there is a need for attention and focus on this issue.

Uh, and the evidence and the research is clear, um, that this can make a difference. Uh, people with poor numeracy end up earning less, much less likely uh to be in employment. And actually it turns out that if you look at very young children, uh perhaps the best indicator of their future socioeconomic status is their attainment in numeracy. Um, so for all these reasons this is something that uh I think is worth focusing on. You know, our plan at the the Richmond Project and Lizzie and Bodil, you'll hear from later, brilliant team, is is not just to conduct research to help us understand what's happening, but then to partner with, support, uh or indeed initiate projects and ideas that we think can make a meaningful difference and hopefully over time scale to have national impact and we welcome the opportunity to talk about our work to date and what we plan to do in the future.

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