Essex Multiply article for Essex Alliance Newsletter – Voluntary and Community Sector October 2022

Posted on: November 7, 2022

Overview
Multiply is a new Central Government 3-year scheme to increase adult numeracy skills (19+), funded by the Department for Education and delivered through Local Authorities. At the end of June, Essex County Council submitted its Multiply investment plan – emphasising applying Maths to real life situations. Essex was awarded a £7.9m Multiply Grant agreed and the First Year allocation is £2.4m.

Multiply in Essex
Multiply supports Everyone’s Essex commitments on Good Jobs, Future Growth, Levelling Up, and Lifelong Learning. It also allows good join-up with Education (e.g. parents’ numeracy skills and Year of Numbers); health/social care (via Anchors); and new work on Financial Wellbeing and the Cost of Living. In Essex, NVQ3 qualifications are 8 percentage points lower than the national average. In addition, Essex is 114th out of 151 top tier local authority areas (or 38 th from bottom) for such qualifications, and as well known, Maths is a key barrier to progression beyond NVQ2.

Essex Multiply Interventions
The training will be delivered by local colleges and training providers and is in the process of being commissioned. The courses will be based on the below areas:
 Helping people use numeracy to manage their money. To help to address cost of living pressures. Linked to ECC’s Financial Wellbeing project.
 Numeracy skills required in the workplace delivered with employers. Develop Maths skills pledges with partners, anchor institutions and businesses.
 Helping parents increase their numeracy skills to help their children & help with their own progression. Bringing together providers & schools – linked to Year of Numbers 2023/24
 Engaging the hardest to reach learners – eg. those not in the labour market, care leavers. Working with partners, skills providers & VCS supported by community grants.
 Additional relevant maths modules embedded into other vocational courses
 Confidence with numbers – tasters or access courses to overcome barriers to entry.
 New intensive and flexible numeracy courses targeted at people without Level 2 maths, leading to a Functional Skills Qualification. Delivering a flexible progression route throughout the year – rather than being locked into a September start. (From April 2023)

How Voluntary and Community Sector Organisations can get involved with Essex Multiply

We have budgeted £1m of community grants over the 3 year period to award to voluntary and community sector and public partners to help to support individuals from all communities to engage with Multiply. You are the experts in relation to your client base, and we are approaching you as partners who meet people everyday who have challenges with numeracy. Being interested in what wraparound support you can offer to Essex Multiply, we ask you to consider the following questions:

• How can Multiply complement your existing offer?
• What new opportunities could it create?
• What cohorts do you work with? What places do you support?
• Would any of your staff benefit from Multiply interventions?
• Can your premises be used as delivery locations?
• How can we promote this to other organisations you work with in your area?

Essex Multiply Community Grants
Multiply will enable providers to deliver bite-sized training for adults and we are offering VCS and Partners opportunities to enhance your support to communities and cohorts, notably around the cost of living and life skills to support the Multiply provision.

The quid pro quo is that you will deliver additional outreach, triage and wraparound support and ultimately participants in Multiply training (c. 40-60 starts per £10k grant depending on the cohort – a unit cost of £167-£250).

If you already deliver numeracy training that works for your clients, we would be interested to hear about it)

Call for proposals for year 1 (up to March 2023):
 Community Grants of up to £10k – closing date 11th November 2022
 Community Grants will also be available in 2023-24 and 2024-25
 Contact our Multiply team at multiply@essex.gov.uk for an application form

Author: Alliance Admin
Posted: 07/11/2022
Categories: News