No gremlins: Family learning tackles adult literacy and numeracy

If the UK Government’s ‘gremlin’ TV campaign aimed at adults who struggle with basic reading, writing and maths skills is not reaching a large enough proportion of the target audience, then perhaps it can be integrated with family learning programmes.

An article in The Guardian showcases Jackie Crowther, family learning coordinator for the Swindon area, who has set up Supporting Our Kids clubs for parents of children at local schools.

…there is no whisper of the skills that the government says it really wants pushed through the family learning programme. There was a clue to these before the session - though none of the newcomers would have picked it up - when one of the three women who were on the programme last year stopped Crowther and with barely contained excitement blurted: “I passed my level 1 literacy.”

“That’s terrific! Well done!” Crowther replies with genuine pleasure.

Family learning was launched three years ago by the Department for Education and Skills. According to the blurb, it “includes learning about roles, relationships and responsibilities in relation to stages of family life; parenting education; and learning how to understand, take responsibility and make decisions in relation to wider society, in which the family is a foundation for citizenship”.

Recently, though, says Crowther, there has been more pressure to harness family learning to the Skills For Life programme, Labour’s strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy.

The article goes on to show that even though many parents in the target group are less likely to participate in these programmes due to their own poor experiences of school, they are often encouraged by wanting to be able to help their own children.

Powerful though the parental factor is, Crowther says, satisfaction with one’s own success can become an equally important factor in taking adults beyond the first steps of sharpening literacy and numeracy, and into further study.

Read the full article: http://education.guardian.co.uk/further/story/0,5500,1573598,00.html