Your Stories
National Numeracy’s Corporate Volunteering programme – how your school could benefit!
9 Jan 2025
In just over two years, National Numeracy’s Corporate Volunteering programme has reached over 32,000 children across the UK – a truly incredible achievement!
Working with trained volunteers from our corporate partners, the programme supports positive attitudes towards numbers and maths in Key Stage 2 pupils, by providing ‘My Maths Story’ assemblies and ‘Maths in the Real World’ class sessions aimed at inspiring them to see the value of everyday numeracy.
In the My Maths Story assembly, volunteers discuss how they felt about maths at school, how they feel about it now and how they use it in their job and hobbies.
The Maths in the Real World class session, meanwhile, sees the children meet a series of real-life or fictional characters and discover the ways they use maths every day.
Teachers give feedback on the Corporate Volunteering programme
Feedback we’ve gathered from teachers is overwhelmingly positive.
One of the programme’s aims is to show children the value of maths – a key subject – in the real world and we regularly hear that this goal has been met, while engaging pupils at the same time.
Staff also appreciate the straightforward nature of our booking process, something we know makes a big difference to the lives of busy teachers.
But don’t just take our word for it, read on for testimonies from teachers whose schools took part in the programme:
“Regarding the My Maths Story assembly, the children were engaged and interested in corporate volunteer Dave's story, eager to answer his questions and discuss the ideas he presented. With the Maths in the Real World class sessions, the children loved getting to know the volunteers and mining them for information. They liked being the expert on the volunteer and presenting their information to the other kids.
"We do a lot of oracy in our school and this session was really useful for the children to practise their oracy skills. I think it was really good for the kids to see a variety of people represented in the sessions who were from a variety of backgrounds – the children could see themselves in those jobs in the future, which was inspiring. I also found the booking process stress free and organised.
“I would recommend hosting National Numeracy volunteers to other schools. I think it is worth doing as an engaging session that the students enjoyed and will inspire some of them.”
Hannah Houston, Upper Key Stage Two Phase Leader, PPA Teacher at Chisenhale Primary, Tower Hamlets
“We enjoyed the My Maths Story assembly – the corporate volunteer was engaging, enthusiastic and passionate about her role.
“In the Maths in the Real World class session the children were inspired and the resources were great.”
Rae Dean, Year 6 Class Teacher and Maths Lead at Victoria Primary School, Nottingham
Pupils give feedback on the Corporate Volunteering programme
Encouraging a positive attitude towards numbers in children from a young age is incredibly important towards setting them up with essential life skills and our feedback tells us that pupils enjoy engaging with our Corporate Volunteers and thinking about maths in different ways.
“I knew maths was important, but I never knew it was this important.”
“I enjoyed how Dave told us maths wasn’t his favourite subject, but he still got a job where he uses a lot of maths.”
“I like that even if you don’t like it now, you can improve and now Dave is an official businessman.”
“I really liked how we got to draw these sheets about how we use maths outside of school. I liked how we got to interview people and find out about their jobs and hobbies.”
Pupils from Chisenhale Primary, Tower Hamlets
“The My Maths Story assembly was fun. I like the video saying you always do maths even when you don’t notice it.”
“The Maths in the Real World session was one of my favourite maths lessons!”
Pupils from Victoria Primary School, Nottingham
The assemblies and sessions also prompt pupils into thinking about jobs and hobbies and how they involve maths…
“I go sailing and you need maths to work out how many knots you’re travelling at.”
“My hobby is cricket and it uses maths because you need to know the score and how many runs you’ve got.”
“I like art and I use maths in it as sometimes I want different pieces of paper of different sizes.”
“My hobby is to climb and I have to estimate how much longer I’ve got on the timer.”
Pupils from Chisenhale Primary, Tower Hamlets
How can my school take part in National Numeracy’s Corporate Volunteering programme?
Previously, we have reported on the impact of the programme on the volunteers themselves, whose feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and spoken of how rewarding taking part has been, as well as the effect it has had on their self-confidence and presentation skills.
Chisenhale Primary was visited by Capital One volunteers Dave Richards, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, Shiva Doran, Corporate Social Responsibility Lead, Jaeho Bae, Software Engineer and Zahra Deji-Abiola, Strategy Analyst.
Victoria Primary School meanwhile, was visited by Capital One volunteer Rhian Morris, Accountant.
Our corporate volunteers are from a variety of job roles including Learning and Development, Software Engineering, Accountancy, PR and Customer Service and Data, all inspiring possible future careers for children.
To learn more about taking part in the Corporate Volunteering programme, click here or email our volunteering team at: [email protected]
The power of partners
National Numeracy are immensely grateful for the continued support of all our corporate partners, who make high-impact initiatives, like the Corporate Volunteering programme, possible.
In 2024 partners involved with our Corporate Volunteering programme included Amazon Web Services, Capital One, CISI Future Foundation, Experian, EY, Kartesia, KPMG, LSEG Foundation, S&P Global, TP ICAP and Vanquis Banking Group.
We remain extremely grateful to exclusive start-up funder and strategic partner Capital One, for help to launch the high-impact primary school Corporate Volunteering programme in 2022.
Find out more about our partnerships here.
How can I partner with National Numeracy?
Our corporate partners help both children and adults across the UK improve their numeracy, making a real difference in terms of opening up opportunities and building brighter futures.
Our latest strategy sets out a new vision allowing us to work with communities where there is the greatest need and support more people than ever to take steps to improve their numeracy.
Working together brings a host of strategic benefits. Could your organisation join forces with us?
Learn more about the ways our partners use campaigns to achieve their charitable goals and how your organisation can support National Numeracy’s work by emailing: [email protected]
