£40,000 fund to improve parental engagement in secondary school maths launches
Melanie May | 15 May 2019 | News
A £40,000 innovation fund has launched to encourage parents to get involved with their children’s maths education.
The Solving Together Fund launches today (15 May) and will be open to applicants until 24 June with the aim of supporting two high-potential, early-stage interventions using digital technology to improve parental engagement in maths for secondary students (11-16 years old).
The fund is part of Maths Mission: a partnership set up by Tata and Nesta in 2017 that aims to find innovative new ways to increase young people’s interest in maths, and improve their maths skills. It will contribute towards building the evidence base on which technology interventions work in improving parental engagement.
The Solving Together Fund is open to organisations implementing their work in UK schools, with a particular interest in applicants working in communities with lower educational outcomes. Grantees will gain both funding and support relevant to their individual needs provided by Nesta and Tata for a period of six months. This could include advice on business modelling, measuring of impact or marketing.
Social enterprises, charities and private enterprises can all apply. Interventions can be delivered within the school curriculum, in non-curriculum time or outside of schools. The fund is open to organisations in the early-stages of developing their intervention, perhaps having had positive results in one school but hoping to spread to new locations, or organisations that have tested their intervention in many schools but would like to run a pilot in a new context, for example moving from primary schools to secondary schools.
The Solving Together Fund grants will support grantees with their:
- Implementation – testing their projects in more locations or a new context in order to further improve and refine them and reach more schools, parents and students
- Evidence – supporting organisations to gather further insights into the effectiveness of their intervention that can be used to improve the intervention
Kate Bower, on the education team at Nesta said:
“We believe that getting parents more involved in their child’s maths education could make a real difference in their child’s confidence in the subject and attainment. Digital technology could be used to connect the dots, build connections between schools and parents and make the subject more approachable. We look forward to hearing from the EdTech companies that could make a real difference in this space.”
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Tim Jones CBE, Executive Director at Tata Limited added:
“Tata has businesses in an array of industries. The one thing all these industries have in common is that maths plays a vital role in all that our 60,000+ employees in the UK do daily and It is crucial that the next generation have the right maths skills. We look forward to seeing some innovative solutions on how digital technology can play a part in encouraging parents to support their children in maths.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.