Findings - The Main Story
Enduring Tensions
The Main Plot
Summary
- The main plot tracks the changing shape and culture of the field from the early 1970s to 2000. It aims to identify the key issues and forces that have driven change in the field and to bring to bear material representing the perspectives of the main interest groups on these issues. In particular our account describes a set of key and enduring tensions in the field and examines how these have been managed during the developments at different periods. The timelines we have created have enabled us to identify 4 broad phases characterised by shifting power between the different agencies in the field:
- Mid 1970s: Campaign led by a coalition of voluntary agencies with a powerful media partner, the BBC.
- 1980s: Provision supported by Local Education Authority (LEA) Adult Education Services and voluntary organizations, with leadership, training and development funding from a national agency (Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Agency, ALBSU, later the BSA)
- 1989 - 1998 Demise of much LEA funding, statutory status of ALNE through a more formalized further education (FE) system, directly dependent on funding through a national funding body
- 1998- present: Development of Skills for Life policy steered by a new government strategy unit set up, strongly controlled and regulated by the Cabinet Office. Local Strategic Partnerships and a spirit of collaboration replace the competitive approach created through the previous funding regime.
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Across this whole period we see an initially unorganised domain of social action (work with adults and literacy) struggling for legitimation, whilst having to engage with deep shifts in national policy priorities that redefined the funding sources, goals and discourse of the nascent field as it developed.
As a marginal and fragmented field operating in a complex social environment, ALNE was at times unduly affected by forces not designed with its own priorities in mind. Practitioners and policy actors have had to “hook into” other social projects and sources of funding. Part of the struggle for legitimation has been to raise its status as a fundable area within social policy, within practice and professional development; within the academy as a research area and to create positive representations of adult learners.
At the beginning there was a lack of a coherent discourse in the field, and those mobilising around it drew on existing discourses rooted in earlier work and contributing fields such as remedial education, primary education, general studies in technical colleges, UNESCOs work on functional literacy in developing countries. Once it had established a presence in the new field, ALRA/ALU/ALBSU/BSA played a key role (which it recognised well) in creating such a discourse, a normalised image of adult learners, and in defining and policing the boundaries of the field.