The Changing Face of Adult Literacy, Numeracy and

ESOL:

An evolving landscape of practice

Yvonne Hillier, City University

• 4 regional case studies–practitioners, regional policy makers

• Satellite studies–Friends Centre, Gatehouse Project, Prisons and Unions

• ‘Key’ people• NCDS cohort interviews• Documentary evidence and archive collection

Analysis Frameworks

Time Location Individual life histories of “trajectories” for people or organisations.Key moments of tension or conflict Deliberative Policy Analysis (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003)

Key findings

• Mid 1970s: Literacy Campaign led by a coalition of voluntary agencies with a powerful media partner, the BBC.

• 1980s: Provision developed substantially, supported by Local Education Authority Adult Education Services and voluntary organizations, with leadership, training and development funding from a national agency (Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Agency, ALBSU, later the Basic Skills Agency, BSA)

Key findings

• 1989 – 1998: Depletion of LEA funding and control, statutory status of ALLN through a more formalized further education (FE) system, dependent on funding through a national funding body.

• 1998- present: Development of Skills for Life policy: New government strategy unit created, £1.5 billion of government money is committed.

• Primary

• Remedial

• Special

• English as a Foreign Language

• Liberal Adult Education

• Vocational Further Education

• Radical Adult Education

Theoretical and Pedagogical Influences on Adult Basic Skills

Enduring Tensions

•Professionalisation versus voluntarism

•Nomenclature of the field and its participants: the tension around discourse but also the deeper ideological debates

•Different groupings in the field of adult continuing education: eg literacy, numeracy and ESOL; private trainers v college v community-based tutors; voluntary and statutory.

Enduring Tensions

• Marketisation v collaboration • Rights v obligations • Boundary issues about what counts as ALLN.

These are currently especially sharp around ICT and around notions of “key skills” and “basic skills”.

• embedded versus stand alone provision for ALN

There’s trends when I look back at it. There was all this individualised learning and then there was group learning and then there was open learning in basic skills, then there was family learning and now there’s work placed learning. That seems to be the latest bit of the evolution I feel, new students, new ways of working (RP, Manchester).

• I’ve always had some sort of ‘groupiness’ even if it’s been later on in the session or it hasn’t had a session at all, I’ve always tried to get people to communicate with each other, because I think we’re social beings and I don’t think we learn very well in isolation. And if we’ve been somebody who's struggled with learning the last thing anyone wants to do is work in isolation. So I think the array of orange and blue boxes tends to reinforce the working in isolation and the working from the poor worksheets that have been photocopied from these dreadful resources (MH, Leicestershire)

• But the idea that people can just come in and work their way through packs with tapes or whatever, it sort of just destroys that, any human contact and the advantages of being a group, you know (JN, Manchester)

Certainly when the FEFC first came in it was so rigid that it killed off that student centred way of working. Because everything had to be packaged before you even knew what the student wanted, you know it was just crazy. So that’s loosening up because really the LSC stuff is considerably better, I think from the point of view of allowing you to work with the learner and it’s much more focussed I think on the learner (JC, Manchester)

We have a rather narrow depressing view of education these days and I think nothing has emphasised that better than the basic skills strategy. It’s not wrong, it’s just too narrow, it doesn’t understand why the whole set of reasons why people need literacy and why they want it. (JD, London)

• I always… enjoyed it and believed in what I was doing. I felt that it had a value and that I worked with people who felt likewise. … And there are levels of trust and respect that I don’t think I’ve had since (AR,Leics)

• And we were all on a crusade really, we did see ourselves as doing something very important and so useful (AZ, London)

• And we’ve managed, you know, like little resistant fighters, to keep going for a long time (JB,Manchester)

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