Businesses have to face the future
Half of Dorset employers have no training plans which goes against the government’s strategy.
The Learning and Skills Council has done a survey and found that almost 20 per cent of Dorset employees believe their bosses do not value training highly. Ten per cent feel the offered training does not help them carrying out their jobs effectively.
Chris Minett, Train to Gain Skills Development Director for the South West, is worried about this situation. He comments that employers “are not best placed to meet the challenges of the 21st century, including maintaining staff morale and improving recruitment and retention”.
Dorset Business, the Chamber of Commerce & Industry, has recognised the urgency of training issues though. Samantha Ambridge, Skills Education & Training Services Co-ordinator, says that they “support the idea of everyone doing work-related training – learning should be life-long”. Dorset Business is even developing a programme, but on high Level 4, i.e. on college/university level.
Dorset Council, one of the main employers, has special training programmes, as Councillor David Crowhurst confirms. He says there are employees who lack basic skills. “Some come to us when they’re 16 on an apprenticeship scheme, others are late developers.” He points out that the developing of a skilled workforce forms part of the ‘Community Strategy for Dorset 2007-2016’. One of the priorities is to engage more employers in up-skilling their workforce, particularly in small and medium size businesses.
"We can't wave the magic wand in two hours"
The rate of functional illiterates in Dorset is below the country’s average because the county has been active in this area for decades. At the moment it runs about 75 courses in twelve places, from Christchurch to Sherborne. Wherever there is a demand, a course will be initiated. Jacky Tooth is the curriculum manager Skills for Life for Dorset Adult Education Service and looks back on 20 years in adult education and particularly with functional illiterates.
Mrs Tooth, how important are illiterate adults for Dorset council?
Jacky Tooth: Even though Dorset council has signed a government’s skills pledge I believe there is room for much more awareness raising. For one: illiteracy is an unfortunate word because it brings up all these connotations of people who can’t read or write. About twenty years ago we used to use it and we had more people who were finding it difficult to read and write. Now we use the term ‘Skills for Life’ and we’re talking about quite a high level of literacy skills, we’re talking about somebody up to level 2 which is equivalent to a GCSE in English. It’s about the use of the apostrophe and proper spelling.
Dorset has an average rate of functional illiterates compared with other English counties. But the ‘ Dorset for you’ website points out that the county’s illiteracy level is above average. Why this discrepancy?
Tooth: Rural Dorset is above average. You get people with very low skills in isolated rural spots, for example farm labourers. Gaining access to them has always been an issue. If they have poor skills they’re likely to earn less and they might have no cars to get into the centres. I always get quite cross when I hear about urban deprivation when in fact people neglect to think about rural deprivation. There is nothing worse for example than living in Bridport, to be unemployed, have low literacy and be stuck in that sort of pocket, have no transport.
How do you identify and reach those people?
Tooth: They sometimes come themselves at different key points in their life. For example when the children start to go to school and they come back with homework and ask their parents to help them the parents might find they can’t do it. We run family learning classes which is dangling the carrot: come to these courses and try to understand how your child is learning but at the same time we give the adults an assessment of their own skills and encourage them to improve them. Sometimes people decide they want to go for a job or have some sort of job improvement or promotion – that’s another key point when people will do something. If they’ve been living with a partner who helped them hide it, cover up the problem and that relationship falls apart, then they come too. We are also dangling the carrot and say: improve your English and learn computer skills at the same time. That’s how we get them in.
And once they are in can you keep them?
Tooth: It is not only a huge challenge to get these Entry Level learners in but also to progress them because we have to reach such hard targets and time scales. An Entry Level 2 learner finds it quite difficult to achieve an accreditation for example in one year. Often they have dyslexia and need special tuition.
What is the difference between teaching adults and children?
Tooth: Adults often know better how they learn best. They may be quite streetwise, even though they may have poor literacy skills they’ve learned terrific coping strategies. Because of this it’s important that they are not treated as children, as the empty vessel. It’s important to enter a contract whereby they take responsibility for learning as well. We can’t wave the magic wand in two hours. If they’re going to learn they have to take on board that they have to learn between lessons, as most of them only come in for two hours a week. They also have to realise that they don’t learn that quickly because of their reading problems.
What methods and materials do you use?
Tooth: We tend to use resources which are adult in content, such as ‘Quick Reads’. We don’t use children’s books. It’s also important for adults to have a context in which to learn. If for example a care assistant comes to us and she needs to learn how to write a report, then all the spelling etc. she does is contextualised to her needs. Our learners are far more likely to be successful if they see a purpose.
That means one to one tuition?
Tooth: ‘Skills for Life’ tutors face real challenges because they have to do interesting group work but it’s also crucial that they address the individual need. Those learners had reading classes in school of 30 pupils and more and were written off as daft and shoved to the back. Their individual need hasn’t been addressed. Our classes count on average six to eight participants.
The ‘Skills for Life Strategy’ was launched in 2001. But the problem of illiteracy was recognised in the 1970's, so how was it dealt with over the years?
Tooth: The first initiative was called ‘On the move’. It was a television programme on the BBC. From that point on it was an army of volunteer good doers who went and helped those ‘poor’ people read and write. When I first started in this business twenty years ago in Bridport it was my job as a professional to work with these volunteers. I used to call them the ‘gruesome twosome’: they used to work with the people in their homes but in a way they needed the learners more than the learners needed them. They used to wrap them in cotton wool. It was my job to encourage the learners to come to a learning centre and realise that they were not the only ones with these problems. I had to build up groups and gradually we had more and more people. In Dorset we had an excellent provision through the late 80's and 90's. The core of we practitioners rejoiced at the Moser Report. Our work was recognised and eventually funded. We didn’t have any resources before.
