Literacy phased out of adult education?
Sarah Freeman with the section on the Scottish perspective from Sallie Condy Sallie works for Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector providing support to literacies projects in Glasgow and is Chair of RaPAL
Sarah is a Functional Skills English, ESOL and Dyslexia Specialist teacher in several sites in South London/Surrey
RaPAL members have concern about the recent shift in terminology for adult reading and writing classes in England, from the previous adult literacy to Functional Skills English and Maths. The October 2013 conference seemed an ideal opportunity for delegates to share their experiences and the implications. There was a particularly interesting discussion as we discovered a very wide range of views. There were arguments both for and against phasing out the term adult literacy.
We asked two questions in effect: 1. Is the term literacy suddenly disappearing as a name for classes where students learn to become literate?
2. Is a particular learning experience also disappearing?
The debate was inconclusive. This was perhaps because it is early days to be putting forward strong viewpoints on this linguistic shift in terminology and the corresponding changes that are happening to literacy provision. It was clear that no one organisation or official body had made a conscious decision that this shift should happen. Delegates from outside England and Wales also had a different perspective.
Within Scottish adult literacy provision the expression literacies is applied to all types of literacy provision which provides access to the skills needed to function in our information society. This social practices approach was at the back of many of the delegates' minds as they contributed.
Personally, the discussion was a wake-up call. I realised after the workshop that I held a singular one-sided view on why it would be detrimental to lose the expression literacy. I came to realise that the expression literacy carries certain connotations for some adult learners that they might wish to avoid.
In 2007, National Research and Development Council (NRDC) published findings that drew attention to the benefits of the Skills for Life programme for the most educationally disadvantaged:
Skills for Life was seen as a relatively temporary measure to restore life chances to adults through skills acquisition, after which, for subsequent generations, the education system would ensure that the problem no longer arose. We now know that quick solutions to such longstanding problems are unlikely to be totally effective. Education through such initiatives as 'Family literacy' and 'Literacy and numeracy hours' can achieve a lot in reducing the skills deficit for school-leavers. However, a proportion of individuals in a mass education system are always going to miss out. Furthermore, as expectations of what is needed rise, the pressure towards marginalisation grows. This means that Skills for Life (should) be seen, not as a stop-gap, but as an essential part of the education system. (Bynner, J and Parsons, S, 2007:80-81)
However, the urgency which was already gaining momentum at the end of the Labour government's tenure, to produce results in the education system which would enhance the country's economic profile, has now produced exactly the quick-results, and functional skills series of qualifications which providers find hard to combine with the longer-term, literacy input that many Entry Level learners need.
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