Final Report: Summary of Findings

This project aimed to identify the key issues and forces that have driven change in the field of Adult Literacy, Language and Numeracy (ALLN) and to represent the perspectives of the main interest groups on these through oral history interviews. It has approached ALLN as a key case study of change in post-16 provision in England and Wales, situating the UK experience in an international context.

It has tracked policy initiatives from the 1970s adult literacy campaign to the launch of the present Skills for Life campaign, collecting documentary and statistical evidence, and carrying out 200 oral history interviews with decision-makers in a range of government and national agencies, practitioners engaged in teaching and organizing within (ALLN) programmes and adults with basic skills needs. We used the National Child Development Survey cohort to explore the relevance of ALLN policy to the lives of people identified as having basic skills needs, many of whom who have not participated in formal education or training provision.

The world of Adult Literacy, Language and Numeracy education is complex. People who work in the field are not a homogenous group. Neither are the learners. We have created an account that demonstrates this diversity.

We use a social practice framework that emphasises the uses, meanings and values of reading, writing and numeracy in everyday activities, and the social relationships and institutions within which literacy is embedded. This framework leads us to view the three interest groups of policy actors, practitioners and learners as overlapping but disparate communities who will relate to the policy initiatives in different ways. It enables us to compare policy with everyday practice, both within and outside of educational settings. We use critical discourse analysis to examine changes in the ways in which policy and practice are spoken about (policy discourses). These changes reflect shifting relationships in the field between different actors. Our analysis shows how literacy and numeracy have been framed at different points in time, how learners, teachers, the learning process and the institutional context are represented.

FINDINGS

We have produced an account of how the field of ALLN has changed during the period 1970-2000 creating a set of themed timelines against which to calibrate individual accounts and trajectories and to locate developments in ALLN in their broader social policy context (local, national and international). These timelines have enabled us to identify key moments and four policy phases during this time characterised by shifting power between the different agencies in the field and to document the shifting boundaries and definitions of the field in relation to specific initiatives that have organised it.

We have identified the primary “change forces” during each of the four policy phases and examined how each of these have impacted at different points as the field developed. Considered for much of this time to be a marginal aspect of further and adult education ALLN has been affected by other, more powerful overlapping social projects such as policy for unemployment, immigration or broader reforms in post-16 education and training. It was only with the Moser review and Skills for Life at the end of the 1990s that a co-ordinated national strategy was specifically designed to promote change in the field, closely aligned with other social policy priorities. During the first period media and campaigning pressure groups were clear drivers of change. The initiative was carried forward by volunteer tutors and Local Education Authorities (LEA) responses were very varied. In the second phase, the LEAs and a national development agency, the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills agency (ALBSU) were prominent. Local authorities lost their power as a result of broader political changes during the 1980s, and after the legislative changes of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, further education colleges became major players while the national agency became increasingly involved with quality control.

We have identified a set of enduring tensions that have had to be managed by policy actors, practitioners and learners during this period. We have tracked the way people have responded to and developed strategies related to these tensions across the period of our study. Some of these tensions were created by the outside forces that impacted on it at particular moments, such as marketisation. Some reflect enduring struggles. For example, issues of professionalisation are especially contentious in a field that has been built largely on a volunteer and part-time hourly paid workforce. Responding to diverse adult learners whilst satisfying demands for accountability in a mainstreamed, publicly funded service is a constant challenge.

We have used the resources of a large-scale data set, the National Child Development Study (NCDS), to illuminate the attitudes and aspirations of non-participant adults in relation to ALLN. We used existing background information to design a carefully structured sample of adults from the NCDS cohort and completed 78 interviews. The interviews explored people’s experiences of learning over the thirty year period, including their awareness of publicity and opportunities for ALLN, their attitudes to accreditation and to formal learning both school and adult education, their uses of new technologies, networks of support and intergenerational aspects of these.

Some people concur that their literacy and numeracy skills are inadequate but are still uninterested in taking part in courses. Our data suggest that in later life many people reach a working compromise between their ambitions and their actual lives. People build support systems, financial security and also deep identities built around the experience of exclusion. Being asked to challenge that ‘settlement’ may be experienced as disruptive and too risky, given past experiences of educational exclusion. Basic skills are not salient, particularly in routine employment, or they are so much part of everyday activities that people are unaware of them and any difficulties or limitations they experienced are attributed to other constraints, such as health problems. The yardsticks of personal efficacy in everyday life are more subtle and multi-faceted than educational assessments, embedded as they are in reciprocal social relationships, complementary abilities and personal qualities.

We have created an archive of material that can be used by future participants and researchers in the field.We have captured rich and inflected stories from three main stakeholder groups in ALLN across a crucial period of social change. These new data have been archived for future researchers and participants in ALLN. We have catalogued and archived the interviews and 50 boxes of documentary evidence to be housed at Lancaster University with open access through a web interface. A record of the project, its methodology and findings is also contained on our website and this will be maintained and developed beyond the end of the funded project.

These achievements can offer the field understandings of its origins, help illuminate present dilemmas and identify what still needs to be done to effectively support adult learners, practitioners and managers.