5 November 2026 Building financial confidence through numeracy
Confidence with numbers is about more than just passing exams. It forms the backbone of everyday decisions, from budgeting and saving to weighing up choices about education, work and the future, and plays an important role in social mobility. Financial confidence grows when learning is grounded in daily life and supported by the people and organisations around us.
Through our partnership with Barclays LifeSkills, The Talent Foundry delivers facilitated sessions in schools across England. By helping young people develop confidence with money through hands-on activities, discussion and employer insights, the programme shows how numeracy can be a source of confidence rather than hold young people back.
Numeracy as a gateway to success
Financial literacy helps young people make informed decisions about their futures and long-term wellbeing. However, many leave school without having practised essential skills such as budgeting, understanding interest rates or planning for unexpected costs.
Developing financial confidence extends beyond just understanding technical terms. It means feeling able to ask questions and evaluate risks and choices. This is why it is important to connect numeracy to everyday life, helping students understand how maths supports making confident decisions about money and the future.
Connecting learning to the real world
At Thomas Tallis School in southeast London, education means empowerment, and numeracy is embedded across the curriculum. For their students, LifeSkills workshops add a practical focus on money, giving them the chance to explore questions about money in ways that feel relevant to their own lives. We attended a LifeSkills workshop – the Financial Goals Quiz – to see this approach in action.
Rahima Choudhury, Guidance Lead at the school, explained:
We believe numeracy and literacy are a cross-curriculum responsibility. Barclays LifeSkills makes it come alive, makes it real. Students get to practise budgeting themselves. It’s practical maths, which the students really enjoy.
The programme also connects students with Barclays volunteers and workplace experiences. Bridging the gap between education and the world of work helps students see how financial literacy, numeracy and employability are used beyond the classroom, linking what they learn in school to future career and education pathways.
Building long-lasting confidence
At Thomas Tallis, the aim is not only to teach financial concepts, but to help students feel more confident using them. LifeSkills supports that by giving students the chance to practise, discuss and apply what they are learning in realistic situations.
Rahima reflected:
I think it’s about collaboration … it takes a village to raise a child.
This approach shows how schools, employers and volunteers can work together to help young people develop confidence with numbers and money.
For students, the impact is clear, with hands-on learning cementing confidence.
Marcella, a student at Thomas Tallis, said:
The best bit is that we were given various questions to practise our skills with money and we were really involved in doing it.
Mimi, another student, said:
I really liked doing the calculations… it helped me know what I’d do in the future with money.
Students described learning about savings, interest, credit scores and budgeting in ways that felt proactive and tangible, rather than abstract. Working with volunteers helped bring those ideas to life and showed how numeracy underpins real financial decisions.
Marcella described how he learned to divide money into different “pots” and use practical saving techniques.
I understand how to budget properly.
Closing the financial confidence gap
Number Confidence Week (2-8 November) is organised by the charity National Numeracy and spotlights the importance of building confidence with numbers in everyday life. Financial literacy is a vital part of the picture, because feeling comfortable with money often begins with feeling comfortable with numbers. Our partnership with Barclays LifeSkills enables us to help students develop the knowledge and confidence required to manage money and make future plans.
Find out more about Barclays LifeSkills and access free money resources.