Final Report: Why Don’t Adults Participate in ALLN Programmes?

We integrated the interview data with background variables from the NCDS survey to provide individual profiles which could identify new variables for future surveys. This helped us examine their current participation in learning against previous educational experiences.

In some cases people concur with the tests that their literacy and numeracy skills are inadequate but they are still uninterested in taking part in courses. What do our data tell us about why? There is evidence (supported by findings presented in Schuller et al 2004) that in later life people reach a working compromise between their ambitions and their actual lives, a phenomenon which has been called ‘settlement’. This does not always imply living on the margins in terms of wealth. People have support systems and also deep identities built around the experience of exclusion. Being asked to challenge that ‘settlement’ may be seen as threatening and too risky, given past experiences of education. An interviewee who “can’t be bothered” to go back to formal learning also says of his schooling “they couldn’t be bothered with me”.

How do we explain the differences between self and external assessment of basic skill need? Sometimes people describe clear limitations in terms of basic skills, but their lives are lived where many aspects of literacy and numeracy are either irrelevant (particularly in routine employment) or so embedded in everyday activities that people are not aware of them as such – any difficulties or limitations they have are attributed to other things. In the case, for example, where limited literacy or numeracy is associated with a complex of other factors, such as health or long-term disability, this presents much more salient constraints on people including key limitations on their employment opportunities and their ability to participate regularly in educational activities. Sometimes we discovered a history which suggested that as children whose teachers’ rated them as quite competent under-performed on tests for a number of reasons which affected the subsequent maintenance of basic skills. Interviewees might state they had low levels of skill but still not see publicity as targeted at them. From the distantly remembered “On the Move” to the current Gremlins campaign people felt that ALLN would be good for people who need it, but did not count themselves as being in that group. The yardsticks of personal efficacy in everyday life are more subtle and multi-faceted than educational assessments; they are embedded in social relationships, complementary abilities and personal qualities and when things go wrong, there are many potential causes of this too.

Other findings from our data include: adults’ ambivalence about accreditation and clear understanding of the difference between use and exchange value; very extensive detail on the dynamics of current informal learning in relation to ICT; views about teachers and preferences about the organizational context of learning; information on the attitudinal and emotional legacies of previous school experiences and different attributions of failure.