Essential skills like literacy and numeracy are increasingly crucial for life and work, for business success, and for economic growth. Raising levels of essential skills will be key to support people back into work to tackle the ongoing recruitment crisis, and to enable the local economy to grow in order to mitigate the effects of the cost of living crisis and raise living standards.

For local policy to effectively target support through the adult education budget and new programmes such as Multiply, it is important to understand local need. Multiply plans and SPF programmes should be underpinned by clear analysis and firm evidence of need and demand, and provide evidence to support approaches to engagement and outreach, boosting participation and delivering outcomes.

We’ve been partnering with local authorities to help them map and understand local skills needs. Explore our local data analysis and find out how we could support your local area or region below.