n recent years the government has uncovered a worrying trend in falling levels of basic skills in adults. To combat this trend they brought out their ‘Back to Basics’ campaign which refocused attention on the teaching of basic skills in schools, further education and the work place. Evidence uncovered by The Basic Skills Agency show that poor levels of basic skills can contribute too many social and economic problems. It is believed that this problem costs Welsh industry £588 million every year. Adults with poor literacy and numeracy skills are four times more likely to have experienced long term unemployment, they generally have poorly paid, unsecured, unskilled jobs with little prospect of promotion or training. The Basic Skills Agency has highlighted a connection between poor basic skills and criminal behaviour; six out of ten men in prison are illiterate or innumerate.

There is also a connection between poor levels of skills in families, there is signs of intergenerational problems, parents are ashamed of their lack of ability to read and count, this leads to them being unable to help their children leading to their children having poor skills, seven out of ten children with literacy problems have got parents with literacy problems. The government has realised that it costs more to retrain people who have slipped through the traditional educational system than it does to ensure people leave compulsory education with the necessary skills to allow them to become active members of society. However they also recognise the importance of helping those adults that have already left education to improve their skills, to help them lead more productive members of society, adults with poor basic skills are less likely to vote or be involved in the local community. Many factors point to poor basic skills stemming from a poverty of aspiration, expectation, culture and economic poverty. The government has highlighted the skills they deem necessary for a person to be successful in life and employment, the back to basics policy was designed to focus education on these areas.

The basic skills that the government talk about are literacy and numeracy, there was some debate as to whether I.C.T. should also be included as a basic skill, the reasoning being that in today’s society being computer literate is essential for leading a fulfilling life. It was decided to concentrate on literacy and numeracy the concept being that computer skills can be developed after the basics are covered. The aim was to get adults up to Level one in these key skills. Level one in Literacy is the ability to ‘understand short straightforward texts of varying length on a variety of topics accurately and independently. To obtain information from different sources’ and for numeracy the level one standard is ‘Understands straightforward mathematical information used for different purposes and can independently select relevant information from given graphical, numerical and written material’. There are 780,000 adults between the age of sixteen and sixty-five years old in Wales who fail to meet this criteria in 2001, 46% of sixteen year olds fail to gain A to C grade in English and 57% fail to achieve A to C grade in mathematics. To address this problem and the problem of adults in society with low level skills the government has come up with their educational drives. For England the policy was the ‘Skills for Life’, in Wales the situation was slightly worse less adults aged sixteen to sixty-five years of age had good levels of Literacy and Numeracy, in 2004 twenty five percent of the adult population had literacy skills below level one and fifty –three percent of adults had numeracy skills below Level one (Words Talk – Numbers Count). The Welsh Assembly Government working in conjunction with the schools, further education providers and employers have developed a strategy to attack this problem. The Welsh Assembly Government’s aim is to have 100% of the adult population in Wales with at least Level one skill in numeracy and literacy. Their strategy to achieve this is laid out in the Welsh Assembly Government’s policy document The Learning Country, this was to last five years until 2005, when it was superseded by the second phase document, Words Talk – Numbers Count, and this policy will last until 2010. I will be concentrating on the post sixteen groups however the policy sets out strategies for all age groups starting at home before school age.

The Welsh Assembly Government’s strategy was firstly the learning country; this policy recognised the challenge facing Wales, to significantly reduce the number of people struggling with literacy and numeracy. They aimed to reduce the number of young people leaving school still struggling with basic skills, to significantly reduce the number of adults with poor basic skills. This strategy was based on a partnership between the National Assembly for Wales, the Local Education Authorities, A.C.C.A., National council for Education and Training, ESTYN, the voluntary sector, education and training providers, employers, the local community and the learners. This consultation resulted in four key measures; these were ‘Continuous promotion of the importance of basic skills now and in the future.’ And ‘Action plan for local and National strategy.’, ‘Effective improvement programmes’ and lastly ‘Literacy and numeracy qualifications for young people and adults.’ these measures were discussed in the learning Country. The overall strategy was to develop a co-ordinated, cohesive approach to increasing the level of basic skills in the population. This policy was after the Raising Standards of Literacy : A Framework for action in Wales (1998), which was developed to provide local strategies, providing teachers with best practice in the believe that good teaching will create a successful foundation for learning to take place. This led to a revised curriculum being introduced in 2000, designed to strength the teaching of basic skills. By 2001 it was obvious that a lot of these people were not being reached, urgent and effective action was called for, this resulted in the two phase strategy starting with the learning country and moving on to the words talk numbers count polices.

The policies I am going to concentrate on are laid out in the Welsh Assembly document Words Talk- Numbers Count, the aim outlined in this document was ‘Help people with low basic skills to identify their needs and to teach them.’ Also ‘Ensure effective learning provision is in place and that learners receive sufficient support over both participation and completion.’ (Words talk- numbers count).Basically the aim is by improving basic skills this will contribute to combating social exclusion, widening participation in learning. This should help people find good quality jobs and help develop safe and strong communities. For the post sixteen age group three main objectives have been specified as has how they will be measured, the first one is to reduce the number of sixteen year olds without basic skills at level one, this is measured by the relevant qualifications obtained and by comparing numbers identified in post sixteen screening and will be monitored by the PLASC and LLWR. The next objective is to ‘raise the level of basic skills in the adult population’ they measure this by the percentage of working age adults with literacy and numeracy skills at level one and above number of employees covered by the employer Pledge, this is monitored by repeating the scale of needs survey in 2008/09 and benchmarking what progress has been made. The last objective is to ‘improve the effectiveness of post sixteen dedicated basic skills learning’ this is measured by monitoring the numbers starting courses in basic skills, what qualifications have been achieved, any non-qualification outcomes and measuring the quality of the provision. The targets set out by the Welsh Assembly is that by 2010 eighty percent of adults aged sixteen to sixty-five years of age will have literacy skills of at least level one and fifty-five percent of adults to have at least level one numeracy skills.

There is evidence from the office of public information to show that there has been some improvement in the levels of basic skills in the adult population of England. According to The Skills for Life Survey- a National needs and impact Survey of Literacy, Numuracy and I.C.T. investigated any changes in the levels of the basic skills over a period of time. In 1997 there were approximately seven million adults in England with literacy levels below level one; by 2003 this had improved to approximately five point two million adults with literacy levels below level one. This increase in literacy levels can be directly attributed to the effective basic skills policies outlined in Skills for Life that are being utilised in England. There has been a less dramatic change in the numeracy figures, in 1997 there was approximately seven million adults aged between sixteen and sixty five that had numeracy levels below entry level three, which is around the average eleven year olds ability. By 2003 that figure had only decreased to six point eight million adults in England who had numeracy levels below entry level three. The level of numeracy that the government would like to see people achieve is level one; in 2003 there were fifteen million working age adults in England who had numeracy levels below level one, which is the equivalent to the lower grades at G.C.S.E. standard.

 Although on the face of these figures it appears that the English policies to reduce the number of people with poor basic skills have had some success there are other factors to consider. The figures do not mention any changes in the level of people of working age, the change in the amount of adults with poor basic skills could be attributed to a fall in the amount of working age people in England. However the fact that six point eight million people still have poor numeracy skills would appear to suggest that the improvement in literacy is genuine. There are still many problems apparent, firstly of one point eight million people who started basic skills courses only four hundred and seventy thousand achieved the qualification, these figures need to be scrutinised to see why the other one point thirty three million did not achieve the qualification, although they are expecting this figure to rise to one point five million by 2007, it will be interesting to see if this is achieved. Literacy levels appear to be rising steadily with only sixteen percent of the working population now having literacy levels below level one and only five percent with literacy levels below entry level three. This would appear to support the government’s belief that their basic skills policy is working. The situation is quite different in regards to numeracy, forty seven percent of adults aged between sixteen and sixty five are still below numeracy level one and twenty one percent are below entry level three. These are worrying figures and it would appear that the numeracy policy for England needs to be revisited.

In Wales they had separate policies to promote basic skills, one of these policies was the I.L.A.’s, these are individual learning accounts, people with few academic qualifications can claim this money for them to pay for a training course. It was an attempt to encourage people back into education. These were a big failure; by 2005 only three thousand people out of an expected one point three million people actual claimed I.L.A.’s to start courses. This part of the Welsh Assembly‘s educational policies was a complete disaster.

In June 2006 the Welsh Assembly commissioned a consortium led by Miller Research (U.K.) Ltd. to evaluate the impact of the basic skills package for Wales; this research is to measure the effectiveness of the Words Talk- Numbers Count policy that runs up to 2010. It is designed to ‘subject the strategy to robust and independent research to evaluate its impact’ (Miller Research). The research is designed to examine the effectiveness of the basic skills strategy for Wales, the impact this strategy has had on the population’s basic skills level and any social, economic consequences of the strategy. This strategy uses information from internal monitoring where ever possible , any gaps in the internal monitoring are then identified and tools are put into place to monitor these areas. They will also be taking into account the effect changes in levels of basic skills have on the wider community.

A survey by the British Market Research Bureau in 2004 on literacy levels in adults aged between sixteen and twenty five years olds found that of the two thousand five hundred people surveyed, twenty five percent have only entry level literacy and fifty percent had entry level numeracy, this highlights the problems facing Wales. In March 2007 it was identified that approximately half the adults in Wales have numeracy level below that of an average eleven year old. And a quarter of adults had a reading age of eleven or below. This would seem to suggest that little progress has been made by the initial years of the words talk – numbers count policy. This would appear to be in contradiction of the Welsh Assembly Government’s belief  that standards are rising, in the National Strategy for Wales, the basic skills agency state that better planning and the effectiveness of the strategies being employed are being highlighted as reasons for the rising standards. This survey also indicates that the measures in place to increase the number of sixteen plus learners improving their basic skills are working. They state there has been a significant reduction in the number of adults with poor basic skills in Wales as a result of these policies. However they do not provide any statistics to support this idea and the statistics that are available do not support this belief.

The basic skills organisation in Wales did a survey in 2004 which showed approximately twenty five percent of working age people had literacy skills below level one and fifty three percent of people aged between sixteen and sixty five years old have numeracy levels below level one. When compared against the National Literacy Trust’s survey the overview of Welsh Policy in Wales in 2007 showed that half the adult population in Wales have numeracy levels below level one and twenty five percent of the adult population have a literacy level below level one. This shows a change of only three percent in three years in numeracy levels and no change in the literacy figures, these statistics do not support the basic skills agency’s claim in The National Basic Skills Strategy for Wales that significant improvements have been made in reducing the number of working age adults with poor basic skills.

When discussing basic skills levels with colleges who teach basic skills in further education you get a mixed response. There is a general feeling that some post sixteen students are achieving better basic skills, the level of basic skills that students have starting a course tends to depend on their educational background. The opinion is that students can be split into three broad categories, those starting a course at sixteen straight from school, those moving from one course to another within the college and adults returning to education. After speaking to several people who specialise in teaching basic skills on Level one courses they have not noticed a notable difference in the basic skills levels of students entering college at sixteen, this would not support the Welsh Assembly Government’s claim that effective teaching is improving the basic skills of students leaving full time education at sixteen. Although it could be argued that only the students that had failed to obtain Entry level one skill would enter college on a level one courses. This would mean that teachers specialising in teaching level one basic skill would not necessarily notice the changing level of skills. A comparison of the numbers of students entering further education without entry level one basic skills would need to be carried out to substantiate this claim.

There would appear to be an increase in the basic skill level of students who transfer from another college course. Basic Skills teachers have noticed marked improvements in the basic skills of students who have already studied at a further education establishment; these students appear to have better basic skills than equivalent students entering the course directly. This would appear to support the idea that the policies for further education are working and this would support the governments contention that the level of basic skills in over sixteen year olds is improving. This can be substantiated by the increasing number of students leaving further education with at least level one in both numeracy and literacy.

The situation with adult learners returning to education is slightly different; many of these students were in compulsory education before the push on basic skills began. This means that their levels of basic skills can not be used to measure the effectiveness of many of the Welsh Assembly Governments policies. They can however be used to measure the effectiveness of the Welsh Assembly Governments drive to get adults back into education and the effectiveness in the further education establishments basic skills teaching. Lecturers have noticed a rise in the number of adults returning to education; however they have also noticed a change in their attitude to learning. Many of the adults returning to education are not committed to their studies and retention rates are falling as are results. Although more adults are starting courses less appear to be completing these courses. This belief is substantiated by the large failure to complete courses already highlighted in England. This evidence contradicts the government’s assertion that their basic skills policies outlined in Words Talk- Numbers Count are working to help more adults achieve basic skills qualifications.

There would appear to be some evidence of change in basic skills in England, their policies laid out in Skills for Life does appear to have impacted the basic skills levels of the population. Clear evidence has been compiled to highlight the reduction in the number of adults who struggle with basic skills. There was a large fall in the number of working age adults who had literacy skills below level one, this change is to large to be accounted for by changes in the number of working age people. This would suggest that their literacy policies have been successful; however there is still a large amount of people who are not being reached by the current strategy. The strategy should be investigated to improve its effectiveness if possible, to highlight what parts are working and promote them, to identify the areas that are not effective and eliminate them, to try to reach as many people as possible.

Ivan Lewis speaking on behave of the government said, ‘I am determined to ensure that today’s young people will no longer endure the decades of neglect in literacy and numeracy education which is reflected so starkly in this survey.’ The survey that he was speaking about was the Skills for Life Survey- A Natural needs and Impact Survey of Literacy and Numeracy and I.C.T. skills. This highlights the forty seven percent of adults who have literacy skills below level one and the twenty one percent of working age adults with numeracy skills below entry level three. This survey highlights the fifteen million people who lack numeracy skills at lower GCSE grades. Although England has had early success, Ivan Lewis recognises the size of the problem facing them and the need for continuous effort to combat basic skills, especially application of numbers which does not seem to be responding to the policies as favourably as the literacy levels are.

In Wales the situation is slightly more complex, to begin with the problem was bigger, and Wales had higher levels of poor basic skills than England, which meant the problem was more complex. The Welsh Assembly Government’s strategy as laid out first in the learning country and then in Words talk-Numbers Count was multi layered, they recognised the fact that the problem had to be addressed on several fronts. The adults already operating in society without the necessary skills had to be reached but also the children currently being taught also had to be reached to ensure the problem did not extend into the future. They did this with a policy spanning ten horizontal tiers and with ten priority groups. The success of the policy appears to be fragmented.

There has been a significant improvement in the performance in primary schools, with only twenty six percent not up to standard in English and thirty one percent not up to standard in application of number. This is significantly less than for other age groups, such as fourteen year olds who have forty one percent below standard in English and thirty nine percent in application of number. This would appear to suggest that the Welsh Assembly’s policies for primary schools are working.

In the post sixteen sectors it is impossible to determine whether the strategies are working effectively or not. The facts stated by the Welsh Assembly are not support by the statistics provided by the National Literacy Review; these statistics do not support the idea that the government’s policies have been effective. They do not show any significant changes in the levels of basic skills in the post sixteen age group. This belief is supported by the observations of college’s that are currently working in the further education sector; they do not appear to have noticed a significant change in the levels of basic skills. The government on the other hand believe that there has been a significant improvement in the levels of basic skills in working aged adults. There will be more conclusive evidence when the Miller Research Review is completed and released, it will be interesting to see what their opinion is as it is based primarily on internal information and is meant to be independent and robust. Until this review is ready there is no consensus of opinion on the effectiveness of the Welsh Assembly government’s educational policy. The one item that all parties can agree on is that there is still a lot of work to do in this area. This was summed up nicely by basic skills commission when they said, ‘A further period of sustained effort is needed to deal with the serious basic skills problems in Wales. These hold back too many people and that in turn holds back our economic, social and cultural development’.  

Literature Review

One of the main sources of information was the government policies a learning country and Words Talk- Numbers count, these documents laid out the strategies that the Welsh Assembly Government are employing to improve the basic skills situation in Wales. These documents provide the foundation for this assignment, their accuracy is not in doubt because they are factual, they just outline the polices there is no judgements or opinions given on the information. This is also true of the Skills for Life document which outlines the basic skills strategies for England, once again this document is not subjective, and so there is no conflicting information. These two documents make the bases for meeting my first objective, to identify what the government educational policy is for key skills.

The Office of Public Information conducted a skills for life survey- A national needs and impact survey of literacy, numeracy and I.C.T. This document provided statistics on the amount of people with low basic skills, it breaks the information down into groups of people who have skills below certain levels, and breaking the figures down in this manner provides better information and makes comparisons between figures easier. . The figures made use of the whole working age population rather than a sample, which makes the data more accurate and less subjective. The survey was taken over two time period, in 1997 and 2003; this allows us to compare the figures accurately. The statistical information provided supports the governments claim that the English strategies have had early success. This conclusion is also support by the basic skills agency for England; they show early success for the English policies, which support the claims made by the office of public sector information that the strategies have been successful. On the government’s website www.dfes.gov.uk, they also support this belief that there have been marked improvements in the levels of basic skills in working aged people in England; however they did notice that women were lagging behind men in the numeracy levels and this would have to be addressed. There was some conflicting information however as of the one point eight million people who started basic skills programs only four hundred and seventy thousand people achieved qualifications; this would contradict the success of the policies. All the statistics and information that I collected on England’s literacy and numeracy policies would support the idea that they are improving the levels of basic skills in England.

There is some more conflict concerning the successfulness of the basic skills policies in Wales, some documents claim that there has been significant improvements in the level of basic skills however this is contradicted by other sources. The basic skills agency has produced a document called, the national basic skills Strategy for Wales. This recognised that 780,000 working age people have problems with literacy and numeracy in Wales. This document claims there have been significant improvements in the basic skills of primary school age children. They do provide the statistics of how many children are below the appropriate level, how ever they do not provide any data from past years to support their claim. They do provide comparisons in the same year to other age groups where their statistics are more favourable, this does partially support their claim and they do not make any claims regarding the other age groups.

This document claims that the standards are raising, that better planning is having a positive effect on the level of basic skills in the post sixteen communities. They do not provide any statistics to support this claim; they just make the claim that there has been a significant reduction in the levels of people who struggle with basic skills. This claim is contradicted by the National literacy Trust in their document, Overview of Welsh Policy in Wales. This document shows the failure of one of the Welsh Assembly Government concepts, the individual learner accounts; they provide statistics to support their claim that this strategy was a abysmal failure. They provided statistics to show how many adults between the age of sixteen and sixty five years of age had literacy and numeracy skills below the level one standard. Their figures were supported by the Surrey by British Market Research Bureau – Literacy and Numeracy. These figures did not provide a comparison for the figures at another point in time, so it is difficult to judge any improvement in the level of basic skills. However the National Survey of Adults Basic Skills in Wales showed statistics that the level of basic skills in 2004 were approximately the same as the literacy trust had them in 2007. This statistical data would suggest that there has been little improvement in the levels of basic skills in Wales.

There are problems with both these sets of data. The Survey British Market Research Bureau only surveyed two thousand five hundred people. This is to small a survey to accurately extrapolate the whole population’s statistics from. The survey does give good breakdown of the figures to allow for accurate comparisons. The same problem exists for the National Survey Of Adults Basic Skills in Wales, they only used two thousand five hundred and fifty four people in their survey. Extrapolating the data for the whole population from this size survey will lead to inaccuracies. This document did give a good break down of the actual literacy and numeracy levels within the survey which allows good comparisons to be made. However even limited statistics are better than having no statistics to support your opinion. The available information would not seem to support the Welsh Assembly’s claim that significant improvements have been made. This information was used to answer my second and forth objectives.

To address my third objective I discussed the changing levels of basic skills with three further education lecturers who specialise in teach basic skills. There was some conflict between them about whether the levels of basic skills have improved, the lecturers teaching students just entering the college seemed to believe that there had been little change, however in contrast the lecturer who taught people who had already attended a course in college did believe he had seen an improvement. This would appear to suggest that the government’s policies have had partial success.

The Welsh Assembly Government has commissioned a review of the basic skills policy, ‘Words talk- numbers count’, by Miller Research (U.K.) Ltd., this is to subject the strategy to independent, vigorous review. They are planning to take a multi layered approach to measure both the actual changes in basic skills and any unquantifiable improvement in their social, economic existence. When this review is released it should clarify what if any improvement has been made in basic skills levels in Wales. This will provide the independent, consistent evidence of how effective the basic skills strategies have been.