theinformation

NIACE, found that only 19 per cent of employers currently employ an apprentice. However, 40 per cent said they would hire an apprentice if they had all the support they needed. The polling also found that 61 per cent of the large employers surveyed employed an apprentice aged under 25, compared to only 11 per cent of small businesses. More than 80 per cent said they had no plans to recruit an apprentice under 25 in the next 18 months. A recent National Audit Office report found that 68 per cent of the 140 per cent expansion of the Apprenticeship Programme between the 2006–07 and 2010–11 had been among adults aged over 25. It reported that apprenticeships for adults offered a good return for the public money spent on them overall, but said that the Department for Business,

OBITUARY

Alan Charnley – research pioneer

By George Low

We record with regret the recent death of Alan Charnley, pioneer researcher into adult literacy, at Cambridge, aged 82. After retiring from his early career as a school teacher, Alan discovered a new career in adult education research, which laid the foundations of the Right to Read movement in the 1970s. Born in Guatemala, where his Lancashire- born father worked, Alan came to England for a holiday in 1939 but was unable to return because of the war. He went to a boarding school in Lancashire and, at the age of 17, won a state scholarship to University College, London, to read economics. But first he did his national service with the Black Watch, where he found he was one of the few soldiers able to read and write. His wife Evelyn recalls that he was ‘put on clerical duties’, helping the others keep in touch with their families, and was ‘profoundly affected by the lack of life-chances for those with little or no education’. When he finally went to university, Alan read economics before taking a postgraduate course in education. After a further spell of national service he took up teaching, spending Innovation and Skills could improve value for money significantly by targeting resources on areas where the greatest economic returns can be achieved.

40 at primary school and struggle to understand a payslip or a train timetable. The figure has increased by Percentage of apprentices who are 25 or over when they start their apprenticeship

NUMERACY The number of adults with poor numeracy skills has reached 17 million in England alone – very nearly half the working-age population, according to an analysis of government figures by National Numeracy, a new national charity. The group says that almost half of British adults have the numeracy skills expected of children nearly two million over the last eight years (from 47 per cent to 49 per cent), far exceeding the equivalent figure of five million for poor literacy, and is, the charity argues, ‘a disturbing indictment of national attitudes to numeracy’. National Numeracy has been set up to champion the importance of numeracy for people of all ages and seeks to emulate the success of the National Literacy Trust. The group also revealed the results of a YouGov poll of 2,000 adults, which it commissioned last month and which found that, while 80 per cent of adults would be embarrassed to tell someone they were bad at reading and writing, only slightly more than half (56 per cent) would be embarrassed to say they were bad at maths. eight years at Bromley Grammar School in South-East London, until health problems obliged him to stop. After a period as a civil servant he seized the opportunity to return to education, working with the BBC and the Open University in setting up multi-media courses leading to an OU degree. In 1972 the Russell report on adult education made some important recommendations on paid educational leave (PEL) for workers, which the Department for Education and Science felt obliged to follow up. They gave £5,000 to the National Institute of Adult Education (now NIACE) to do research into PEL programmes in three European countries – France, Sweden and West Germany. Alan, by then research officer at NIACE, produced an 800-page document within one year. DES officials were impressed and gave him the additional task of producing a document for the wider public. In 1974 Gerry Fowler, Minister for Education and Science in the new Labour government, launched a national adult literacy campaign on the back of the BBC On the Move programmes and the Right to Read movement in adult education centres. Alan was ideally placed to carry out research for the campaign. He set up a research team, which provided important evidence for practitioners in the national campaign. The first document, Adult Literacy: a study of its impact, was published in 1978, and the next,

Chris Humphries, chair of National Numeracy and former Chief Executive of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, said: ‘It is simply inexcusable for anyone to say “I can’t do maths”. It’s a peculiarly British disease which we aim to eradicate. It doesn’t happen in other parts of the world, and it’s hitting our international competitiveness. With encouragement and good teaching, everyone can improve their numeracy.’

49

Percentage of British adults who struggle to complete primary-level maths questions, according to an analysis of government figures by new charity National Numeracy and most important, which he co-authored with H.A. Jones, was published a year later (The Concept of Success in Adult Literacy). Alan Tuckett, former Chief Executive of NIACE and Right to Read campaigner, recalls the impact the research made in the early days of the adult literacy campaign. ‘Alan’s research enabled us to target key groups of students and gave us a reliable guide to the effectiveness of recruiting and teaching methods. He and his small team went on to do about 10 studies of excluded and disadvantaged groups, such as the unemployed, single mothers, NEETs and ethnic minorities, and so on. His research was ground-breaking and rock solid. He was certainly a rock on which my predecessor Arthur Stock could depend ... Sadly, his health gave out shortly after I took over in 1989 and he was obliged to retire.’ Despite ill health, Alan enjoyed more than 20 years of retirement. Although latterly he could not travel far, he could get to Newmarket with Evelyn to enjoy his lifelong love of horses, which stemmed from his childhood in Guatemala. At the races his mathematical and logical skills came to the fore and, according to Evelyn, earned him a reputation as ‘the only punter who always returned home with a profit’. ‘A pity he didn’t start earlier,’ she sighs. ‘He was no gambler, but his life was full of adventure and concern for the underdog – 82 years well spent!’

SPRING 2012 ADULTS LEARNING

7