Numeracy assessment showcase April 2025
AQA's new assessments aim to help tackle the issue of financial illiteracy among young people.
AQA is developing new assessments to develop numeracy skills and help address the issue of financial illiteracy.
Around 10 million adults in the UK are financially illiterate. Financial illiteracy means you are more likely to not have savings, become a victim of scams and not invest money effectively.
At the same time, young people live in a world where the meaning of money and payment is changing fast.
This is perhaps why so many young people are concerned about financial literacy and want to learn more about it. However, at the moment, both teachers and parents feel that schools are unequipped to help.
AQA's new app and assessment
AQA is developing a teaching and learning app and an assessment that allows students to demonstrate their ‘real life’ numeracy in a way that is different to GCSE Maths. We believe that young people should leave full-time education able to understand and make decisions about financial products, manage budgets, understand the importance of savings, and make sense of tables, charts and statistics.
The app will be auto-marking, giving valuable feedback. It will recommend when students are ready for the final assessment and it will build numeracy and financial literacy skills, even if the final assessment isn’t taken.
Initial research suggests our new assessments are much needed. When we tested our prototype questions with students, performance on money questions was much lower than on other units.
Building on our success
Both students and teachers responded to our assessments positively. Most students felt that current GCSE Maths content is less relevant to their lives. They valued the real-world application of the money management topics in our prototype. Likewise, teachers felt that our assessment was highly relevant for their students.
We are going to continue testing and refining our assessment. Any assessment will be valuable for everyone, available for anyone to take at any time, and digital. Watch this space for further announcements.