Professional darts players are promoting new numeracy courses aimed at boosting adult maths skills.

Skills minister Ivan Lewis highlighted darts players' amazing agility in numeracy when he visited the World Professional Darts Championships at Lakeside in January.

The Department for Education and Skills has joined forces with the British Darts Organisation (BDO) to help stress the importance of mental arithmetic skills in daily life and encourage people to sign up for the free courses available.

Seven million people describe themselves as regular darts players, but 14.9 million adults in England lack the numeracy skills of an 11 year old.

Mr Lewis said: "Darts is a fun way to sharpen up your number skills but our ‘Get On’ Campaign for adult skills also offers many simple, enjoyable training courses in maths, reading and language that can achieve quick results. ‘Get On’ is having a real impact on adult’s lives and we have just reached our target to help three-quarters of a million adults gain a first national certificate in literacy and numeracy."

Andy "The Viking" Fordham, 2004 Lakeside World Professional champion, is among the players who are supporting the campaign.

He says: "Darts is the great leveller - there are fans from all walks of life who follow the game. But it also does reveal any problems that people might have with their sums. I would encourage any players out there who don’t feel very confident with maths in other contexts to find more out about the campaign, to build on what they can already do."