This is according to Neil Morrison, HR director at Severn Trent, located in the Midlands, who revealed that aeound 10% of young people coming aboard on its apprenticeship programme had significantly limited numeracy skills - at the level of an 11-year-old. 

He stressed to the House of Lords that struggles to tell the time and do basic maths can create “a problem in terms of shift patterns, doing basic calculations and struggling with percentages or deductions of things like payslips, tax and national insurance.”

Highlighting that this is a larger societal problem, Mr Morrison stressed that this points to a likelyhood of poor numeracy skills and a lack of support for this throughout the UK as a whole. He said: ““The stat for the Midlands is that 53 per cent of people come out with less than a grade four in maths.”

Mr Morrison was giving evidence as part of the “Numeracy for Life” committee’s inquiry into maths skills in Britain, the Daily Telegraph reports.