Skills for Families

What was Skills for Families?
Skills for Families was a joint initiative between the Adult Basic Skills Strategy Unit and Learning and Skills Councils (LSCs), delivered by a consortium led by the Basic Skills Agency between March 2003 and July 2005. Its aim was to develop a coherent, cross-agency approach to area-wide programmes for families, including the development of new programmes to improve the literacy, language and numeracy skills of parents or carers and their children. It hoped to improve connections between schools, local authorities and the post-16 sector.

In April 2003, 12 partnerships across all nine English regions were established to lead regional family programmes, which were accompanied by training, support and evaluation. The project was expanded for one year from August 2004, and 19 key LEA and LSC partnerships were chosen for this second phase, which focused on:

• Extending the local infrastructures for planning and managing family literacy, language and numeracy that were piloted in phase one
• Developing and testing a range of delivery models, using LSC funding and based on the Skills for Life learning infrastructure and the national curriculum. New models of delivery included work with secondary schools, teacher training and distance learning programmes, workplaces and voluntary organisations to reach and engage a wide audience
• Developing or adapting additional programme and promotion materials to support literacy, language and numeracy
• Disseminating effective practice to other Local Authorities, the 47 local Learning and Skills Councils, voluntary organisations and other relevant agencies
  

Links:
For more information visit www.lsc.gov.uk or email
familyprogrammes@basic-skills.co.uk

Research on Skills for Families

The Skills for Families projects from the first phase have been individually evaluated, and some key findings of two of these evaluations are below. For the general evaluation visit www.lsc.gov.uk.

Guides produced by Skills for Families
Three guides have been produced to help organisations who plan to run family literacy, language and numeracy programmes. These are available to download from the Skills For Families website and, under the general heading "Strengthening family literacy, language and numeracy", are entitled "Planning for Quality", "Extending the reach and scope of programmes" and "Testing approaches to teacher training and capacity building for schools and other organisations working with families". All were produced in 2004.

Lessons learnt from phase one of the programme are contained within these guides. These include some questions that LEAs and other learning providers should use to guide their practice, such as:

• To what extent does the LEA or provider incorporate planning and targets related to FLLN [Family Literacy, Language and Numeracy] within its strategic planning and objectives, and is this understood by staff?
• Are there demanding targets for retention, achievement and progression? Do these sit within the LEA, LSC and/or providers' Skills for Life targets?

The guides provide key points for effectiveness in developing new models in community contexts:

• Planning and implementation through an equal partnership between an organisation already in contact with, and trusted by, families and a quality Skills for Life or basic skills provider
• A familiar, accessible location
• A clear focus on literacy and numeracy development for parents and children, but within a context where engagement activities can also take place to draw in new learners who may not yet be ready to recognise the learning needs that they may have
• Recognition of the additional support needs of many of the families involved, and funding to meet these
• Free childcare
• Supported progression routes to further learning

There is also guidance about the form that staff development could take, for example:

• Joint training about the ways of working in sectors. This might involve planning time for staff to tell each other about their organisations, and ensuring that the needs of the partners are met
• Working with the voluntary and community sector, which could lead to a framework for teacher training built on shared knowledge of how families can support their children's development

Link:
These guides can be downloaded from www.lsc.gov.uk

Family programmes - guidance

• Delivering Skills for Life: Family Literacy, Language and Numeracy - A Guide for Policymakers

Evaluations of local projects

All these little umbrellas under one giant canopy
Kate Pahl, University of Sheffield, 2004

This is an evaluation of family literacy, language and numeracy programmes in Read On - Write Away! (ROWA!). ROWA!'s family programmes received funding from the Skills for Families programme part way through the evaluation, which encouraged the development of innovative programmes and community-focused family learning to attract new learners.

Key findings
The evaluation establishes that a community-focused approach to basic skills provided a good context for wider family learning, and that ROWA!'s structure of ward-based local coordinators brought valuable synergy to its activities. There was some evidence that ROWA!'s school-based training offered progression routes, through a menu of different courses, and that the year-long offer of family learning provision in schools was valuable for parents' progression into other learning.

Importance of the home
Innovative courses such as ROWA!'s Backpack project, which focuses on creativity and oracy and supports home-school links, were helpful in supporting parents with little or no experience of formal learning. Such courses fostered their confidence as new learners. Parents felt that these were unthreatening environments where they could share literacy, numeracy and language activities with their children; they explicitly talked about what they brought to the courses, such as the books and children's texts made at home that they contributed to the sessions. The evaluation contrasts this model of family learning, which values home literacy practices and the knowledge that families bring to the educational setting, with the model of literacy taken from the school, on which more structured courses have been based. The evaluation suggests that ROWA! could develop the Backpack project further, to reflect the interests and diversity of homes.

Making Space for Learning
Kate Pahl, University of Sheffield, 2004

This is an evaluation of Skills for Families funded provision in the context of Continuing Education and Training Service (CETS) family learning in Croydon. Several different types of courses were run. The evaluation finds that the funding enabled richer partnerships to be developed and built upon, and provided an opportunity for tutors to explore new curricula concepts. The funding developed new learning environments in a variety of settings, including early years centres, Sure Start and schools. It also generated capacity building and training, which raised the profile of CETS family learning and meant that partners were keen to work with the service.

Some specific findings:

• Parents As Learning Supporters (PALS) played an important role in the courses. PALS are parent volunteers (although there are also opportunities for paid work) who act as outreach workers and links between homes and the school. They support parents with their learning and demonstrate a progression route, since they can gain accreditation through London Open College Network and, it is hoped, move into the job market.
• The ICT course (a Keeping Up with the Children course) facilitated very fast learning with a variety of outcomes, including gaining new knowledge, supporting children and progressing to further learning. The evaluation recommends that a strategy for progression could be to support learners beyond the courses using ICT facilities within libraries, museums and learning centres.
• The bilingual storytelling project offered a model for valuing the contribution of home cultures and was a particularly good way of supporting the language skills and confidence of both children and parents. The video recordings produced were a powerful tool for learners to assess their progress.
• There was potential within CETS for developing an extended schools approach. The evaluation recommends that in secondary schools, existing events such as parents' evenings are "piggy-backed" on in order to make contact with parents and find out what kind of learning interests them.
• There was strong potential to build on existing partnerships, making more explicit the role of organisations like Sure Start and moving to an LEA-wide strategic approach

Contact:
Copies of this report can be obtained from: Family Learning, S. Norwood CET Centre, Sandown Road, London, SE25 4XE Tel: 020 8656 6620