Lifelong literacy for all


Tara Furlong Tara has twenty years’ experience in adult educaon and training in the private and public sectors in the UK and abroad, specialising in integrated English language, literacies and digital learning. She has an ongoing interest in the relaonship between mul-­‐modal and contextualised, versus abstracted learning; and its mirror in social and literate pracces and language across life spheres. She can be contacted on tara.furlong@designingfutures.uk.


The Uppingham Seminars are a long-­‐running occasional series, facilitated by internaonal literacies specialists who develop a programme through an inial discussion around the themes and challenges of the seminar proposal. This April 2016 at Dunford House, West Sussex UK, there were twenty-­‐two parcipants from across the globe including representaves from secons of UNESCO, educaonal NGOs, literacies praconers, researchers and academics.


I was interested in parcipang to inspire and inform my own work and to engage in dialogues with peers. The lifelong learning agenda in the UK is under significant stress and the current negoaons around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) give an opportunity to reflect, take stock and refocus our agendas. It was useful to find that challenges I am aware of in many areas of my work are being addressed at the level of global instuons and their interacons with states. It is a tonic to share the examples of dislled best pracces we invest so much of ourselves in developing and keeping alive as going concerns.


To launch the seminar, the internaonal cohort considered the background papers which enabled a diversity of discussion, quesons and commentary, which were reformulated to overarching themes for further exploraon over the course of two days’ plenary and breakout groups.


Brief presentaons of specialist work opened up the mulple perspecves inherent in local contexts, interpretaons and global frameworks ‘to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all’ (UN, 2015). It was inspiraonal to see in evidence in the room and implicitly in the works presented, the sustained individual and societal commitments to addressing deep-­‐rooted challenges and iteravely building beer futures for all. The focus of the seminar was on the United Naons (UN) SDGs 2015-­‐2030 agreed in September 2015, and the meaning and implementaon of lifelong learning in SDG4: ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality educaon and promote lifelong learning opportunies for al’. The role of lifelong learning across the other goals (UNESCO, 2014), in terms of implementaon and achievement, was considered, in addion to the centrality of gender equality. Literacy threaded as a theme throughout. The UNESCO Educaon 2030 Framework for Acon (FFA) agreed November 2015, provides a more detailed framework for interpretaon and implementaon of SDG4.


Each SDG comprises targets, such as ‘By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substanal proporon of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy’. Each has associated indicave strategies, such as ‘Scale up effecve adult literacy and skills programmes involving civil society as partners, building on their rich experience and good pracce’ and specific indicators such as ‘Parcipaon rate of youth/ adults in literacy programme’. It is ancipated that long-­‐term investment in research and development may be substanally directed by these indicators (UN, 2016), due for final stage agreement and publicaon shortly. As such, it is crical that the indicators match closely to the acvies most likely to generate agreed target and final SDG goals, while being sufficiently


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