Literacy and numeracy are high priorities for the Department. Literacy skills help us speak and listen with others. Literacy allows us to read and write to communicate and understand the world. Numeracy skills help us to develop thinking and solve problems. It allows us to make sense of activities like cooking, reading a bill or timetable and playing games or sport. Numeracy is the ability to use mathematics with confidence for learning, life and work.

Literacy and numeracy are important skills for your child to have in their schooling and everyday life. Children’s learning can improve when parents or carers are involved in their education.

Literacy Framework and Plan for Action

The 2019-2022 Department for Education, Children and Young People Literacy Framework and Plan for Action were published on 15 March 2019 and launched along with the Implementation Plan on 31 May 2019.

The Framework and associated plans have been developed to support the literacy component of our Literacy and Numeracy Goal under the 2018-2021 Department for Education, Children and Young People Strategic Plan, Learners First: Every Learner Every Day.  The literacy and numeracy goal is for all learners to have the skills and confidence in literacy and numeracy to successfully participate in learning, life and work.

Numeracy Plan for Action

Improving numeracy performance has been prioritised as a key departmental goal, with the Plan outlining a number of priorities and actions to achieve this. By working to the plan, the Department will drive improvement in an incremental and sustainable way over the next five years.

The goal of the Numeracy Framework is to provide our learners will the skills and confidence in numeracy to successfully participate in learning, life and work.

The Plan for Action identifies four system priorities with five explicit actions and has been developed through extensive engagement and collaboration and informed by data and research.

The priorities that have been identified across the Department, include:

• attention to the importance of numeracy skills and understanding across all ages
• quality teaching of mathematics to improve numeracy
• valid and reliable measures of impact and learner growth in Mathematics
• strengthen and expand the numeracy teaching workforce.