Adult literacy scheme results "challenging," say PAC

The UK Government's multi-billion literacy and numeracy programmes for adults have achieved little and a House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report has described future targets as "challenging."

The report noted that the UK had "lower levels of literacy and numeracy in the adult population of working age than many of our international competitors".

However, the report indicated that this was partly due to low levels of achievement in schools, where there are improvements in progress.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) expects the programmes in place will raise results. In 2001, the Department launched an ambitious strategy, with a target to improve the skills of 2.25 million adults by 2010.

By 2006, at least £3.7 billion will have been spent on the Skills for Life strategy. However, the PAC report said that given the size of the challenge, it was not clear how much would need to be spent to make "real improvements" relative to other countries.

PAC said that to sustain the strategy until 2010 estimates placed this expenditure in the region of £2 billion.

The first milestone of 750,000 adults achieving qualifications was met in July 2004. Half these qualifications were gained by 16 to 18 year olds - more recently, the balance has shifted further in favour of older adults.

The PAC report described the future targets as "challenging." The 2007 milestone is for 1.5 million adults to achieve qualifications, and the 2010 target to raise this further to 2.25 million adults.

The report expressed concern that while the Department had started to work with the Civil Service and large private sector employers, many small and medium sized enterprises were reluctant to provide their employees with opportunities to improve their literacy and numeracy.

The Committee called for better "joined-up" working between government agencies, and collaboration from employers, so that there are no "unnecessary obstacles" to people completing their course when they start a new job.

The Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI) urged the government to take on board the recommendations in the PAC report.

Last month ALI raised concerns that, despite spending over £3bn, the government's Skills for Life strategy is not on-track to significantly improve adult literacy and numeracy in the UK compared with other countries.

Commenting following the PAC report, ALI Chief Inspector David Sherlock said: "As Lord Leitch and now MPs have emphasised, some welfare-to-work and basic skills programmes are failing to meet the needs of the most acutely disadvantaged adults they were designed to help.

"It is imperative that the Government takes action to ensure that future funding and effort are concentrated on the adults most in need of skills training. Our inspections show that excellence is attainable. We now need to ensure that this is achieved across the board."

(SP/KMcA)