The NLT's response to the DfEE's consultative statement Skills for life 

The strategy was launched - on 1 March 2001. Click here for more information. 
 

General 
1. The National Literacy Trust strongly supports the Government's commitment to provide the leadership and resources to implement a strategy that will move adult basic skills from the margins to the centre of policy. We welcome the intention to provide both immediate urgent action to meet the needs of those currently disadvantaged by their lack of skills as well as the necessary long-term activity to tackle the underlying causes.  

2. However, we believe that there is still much to do to capture the necessary national imagination and support for this issue and suggest that the strategy should be strengthened to recognise more fully the importance of the cultural  "demand side" factors that will need to be addressed alongside the infrastructural "supply side" issues.  We are concerned that, on occasions, the tone of the document implies that the strategy can be delivered by a top-down approach targeted "on" key groups. While we understand and support the need for more effective and rigorous provision, we hope that the drive to reach relatively short-term targets will not run counter to the more difficult, but ultimately bigger prize - that of effectively motivating and supporting the most disaffected and least confident to realise their full potential.  

3. Since the Trust was launched in 1993 we have argued that we need to establish a long-term national strategy for literacy that would connect all the key educational contributors. Such a strategy would be based not only on the need to improve classroom practice, but also to engage more effectively with the full spread of communities. Peer and community groups are capable of generating more demand for learning. The National Literacy Strategy and the Skills for life strategy must be joined with early years strategies for language and literacy, lifelong learning strategies to promote literacy for a wide range of purposes, and the various social inclusion programmes. The importance of literacy demands such a systemic national strategy. This interrelated approach should create synergies that benefit all the component parts. We are, therefore, very encouraged by the establishment of a Cabinet Committee to lead on this issue. 

4. We commend the analysis by Albert Tuijnman of the Institute of International Education, Stockholm University, who identified the following interdependent policy strands for improving adult literacy in the United States. This approach, which requires the joining up of the component parts, very closely accords with the analysis that the Trust has advocated and which we have, in part, been involved in implementing. Tuijnman argues for: 

• cultures of lifelong and life-wide learning
• early childhood education and care programmes
• measures to improve the quality of education
• measures to reduce inequality in the outcomes of schooling
• access to adult education for all citizens.
• literacy-rich environments at work.
• workplace literacy programmes.
• literacy-rich environments at home.
• literacy-rich environments in the community.
• access to information and communications technologies.

5. The Secretary of State in his foreword to Skills for life emphasises the importance of rediscovering and renewing a culture of commitment to learning. We agree, and believe from our experience of area-based strategies for literacy in locations such as Newcastle and Derbyshire, that we must match "supply" of provision more closely with "demand" by listening more carefully to what people want.  The best quality provision will go unheeded if it is perceived as inappropriate to their real needs, given the deep-seated issues of alienation, apathy and low self-esteem that characterise many of our communities.  To make sustainable progress, it is critical that we stress people's potential rather than their deficiencies and make use of the best marketing techniques of the commercial sector in reaching out to adults who cannot see the relevance of basic skills programmes to their lives. 

6. The Trust believes that there has been a neglect of these approaches and we hope that the adult literacy and numeracy strategies will recognise the centrality of developing the self-confidence of learners, via flexible learning approaches.  We feel we can contribute to this based on our following experience: 

• developing overviews of literacy activity from cradle to grave, and building up a nationwide network of contacts in local education authorities, library authorities, education business partnerships and educational organisations, amongst others. This has provided us with a unique capacity to see the potential for partnership working;
• working with parents, teachers, librarians, youth workers and children (0 - teenage) in nearly 500 Reading Is Fundamental projects in disadvantaged areas;
• running the nationwide campaign to support the National Literacy Strategy - the National Year of Reading and its successor the National Reading Campaign - to galvanise support for improved reading and literacy levels throughout the community. The Campaign has been raising the profile of good practice through focusing on different areas of the audience, e.g. positive role models for men and boys, and support for how parents and carers can share books with their children from the earliest age. 

From spring 2001, the Campaign will focus specifically on involving new adult audiences in reading in the belief that raising the profile of the pleasure as well as the purpose of reading for people of all abilities will provide essential support for the basic skills strategy.  Based on our experience of projects which have changed attitudes to reading and wider learning through the National Year of Reading and the continuing Campaign, we suggest that the sheer enjoyment of the written word should not be underestimated as a motivating force.  Central to this is the role of libraries, arts organisations and, crucially, the media in engaging and supporting less confident readers.   

Just as, "The National Year of Reading provided a vital support to the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy in primary schools" (Estelle Morris), so the National Reading Campaign can support Skills for life by involving the wider community in celebrating and valuing literacy. Just as teachers alone could not be expected to raise literacy standards among children, nor can they be expected to transform literacy standards among adults without wider community recognition and encouragement.

Specific consultative comments 
These comments relate only to those areas that the Trust has specific experience of or interests in. 

Priority groups 
7. We support the defined priority groups and agree that the early years links with Sure Start and other early years initiatives should have high priority. However, the importance of using the structures and institutions of the early years sector in order to encourage parental learning and provide the signposting to appropriate provision, should be given more emphasis. We shall be placing particular emphasis on early language development in the period 0-3 and links to parental learning. 
  
Disadvantaged communities 
8. The targeting of resources in disadvantaged communities will, we are sure, be carefully integrated into existing initiatives and local partnerships. It is important that the right structures and attitudes are developed to ensure best possible links with Neighbourhood Renewal work. The approach must be systemic to ensure the resources going into these communities are used to best long-term effect. While there is much to be avoided in SRB-based approaches, there is also much to be gained from the analysis of those SRB initiatives with significant learning dimensions. We strongly urge that the work of Derbyshire's Read On - Write Away!, Birmingham's Core Skills Development Partnership and the Newcastle Literacy Trust, amongst others, be carefully examined. It is very important that the strategy has the courage to recognise that what is needed are sustained long-term interventions which are multi-faceted and learner centred, and work to strengthen the inputs of a wide range of community brokers. The vision for transformed communities must be carefully nurtured, communicated, and then supported by systems-based action plans.   

Parents and family learning 
9.  Family literacy, we agree, is an important strand. However, we would like to see a greater flexibility of funding so that a range of approaches can be developed and appropriately evaluated. We need to bring the least confident parents, especially more fathers, into family literacy and numeracy provision.  We would, therefore, like to see more recognition that first-rung learning can be a non-threatening and cost-effective entry into literacy and numeracy skills development, which can motivate students to go on to higher levels.  This requires a range of locations for family literacy provision. Sometimes well equipped parents' rooms in schools will be attractive to parents, but it is also necessary to provide classes in a number of community settings including those of housing providers. Lessons should be learnt from those local learning partnerships which have established community mentors to support and motivate parents into learning. It is important to offer the most insecure of our potential learners "ways-in" that are non threatening and where the fear of failure is not a barrier. It is also important to ensure that adequate child care facilities are available - so much of what we have to do requires the analysis of the physical, psychological and economic barriers that prevent confident entry into learning. As an example of an interesting approach, we suggest an examination of the work of the West Northfield Local Learning Partnership in Birmingham.  

We shall also be submitting a paper on family literacy that is currently being prepared by Professor Peter Hannon from Sheffield University and Viv Bird from the National Literacy Trust - part of this is already available online. Click here. 

Workers in low-skilled jobs 
10. We strongly support the priority accorded to workers in low skilled jobs. However, many are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and are less likely to receive workplace training. We suggest that those employed to deliver school cleaning contracts would be an ideal test ground for seeing if the strategy can make inroads into a low-skilled, hard-to-reach group. Many school cleaning staff in inner city areas are recent immigrants, some of whom need support with English as an additional language. We also suggest that further work with local authorities and the Local Government Association, in order to develop and disseminate learning initiatives with a literacy and numeracy purpose for other low-skilled workers, could be highly productive. Recent discussions with TUC colleagues have emphasised the importance of ensuring that the "softer approaches" of the National Year of Reading - workplace book collections is one example - should be part of the mix. And that for some, ICT approaches are demotivating. 

Media 
11. We know from our experience with the National Year of Reading and the current National Reading Campaign that both national and local media are potentially powerful contributors to cultural change. The document pays insufficient regard to the role of the media. They need to be persuaded to contribute consistently and positively and for the long run. Clearly national media involvement like the Brookie Basics Campaign during the Year of Reading, are necessary, but we must also work for sustained involvement by publishers of magazines, national newspapers and local media. We, for example, have stressed to our various local partners the value of the structured involvement of senior local media representatives in order to strengthen the likelihood of their sustained ownership. So much of what we need to do is concerned with creating the appreciation of mutual long-term benefits. Again it is about infrastructural developments to support cultural change and this must be planned with a strategic rather than a tactical mind set. 

Pathfinder projects 
12. We support the proposal to establish pathfinders. Their evaluation should include an assessment of the processes that maximise the collaboration of the full range of potential partners. They should integrate the adult literacy and numeracy strategies with the area strategies for lifelong learning, early years, and social inclusion and regeneration. It will be necessary to pilot different area-based approaches that are carefully constructed around relevant local infrastructures. To be effective, these will need to audit the full range of potential contributors and have the leadership and management capacity to take a systemic approach to literacy and numeracy developments. It will be necessary to have high-quality longitudinal evaluations which assess both qualitative and quantitative outcomes. From our partnerships network experience, we would stress the importance of dissemination and the sharing of development and outcome experiences. 

ICT 
13. We are sure that ICT has an important role to play but it is not a panacea. We know from our survey work that ICT is both a valuable means to motivate learners and, of course, to transmit skills. (Work at Sunderland Football Club which is particularly aimed at older unemployed men, disabled people and their carers, is an innovative example.) 
We should like to see more ICT provision in parents' rooms and more workplace and community open-learning facilities. The key danger is that the information revolution will increasingly disadvantage the already disadvantaged. 
 

Conclusion 
14. Such important issues clearly demand a strategy that goes way beyond doing what we currently do better. However, we must build on strengths and recognise the commitment of those in this field who have worked so hard over the years to respond, in the context of a poorly resourced "cinderella" service, to the almost silent scandal of poor adult literacy. 

15. There is a need for a crusade for literacy which is radical and inspirational, and we must use the expertise of many sectors to help communicate the prizes of transformational outcomes and to motivate the currently disengaged. The long-term vision must then be followed by the strategy, the action planning, and its implementation. Nationally and locally we must then create the capacity to facilitate the connections, monitor the benefits, anticipate the hidden costs, and review the system as a whole. The National Literacy Trust is optimistic that with the refinements suggested above there is good reason for much optimism.  We will enthusiastically bring our particular experience and knowledge to the national partnership.