Findings – document analysis Introduction and background

This chapter presents the findings from the analysis of policy documents relating to adult literacy education in England. The document analysis aimed to address the following research question:

How is literacy conceptualised within current educational policy?

In Chapter 2 (Literature Review) I discuss how policy initiatives around adult literacy education in England have been traced back to the 1970s and ‘Right to Read’ which was the first government campaign of its kind on a national level up to the introduction of the Skills for Life initiative in 2001. The latter brought about the first set of national standards for adult literacy (and numeracy) accompanied by a core curriculum, a suite of qualifications at different levels and new professional qualifications for teachers (Taylor, 2008b; Hamilton, 2012). The most significant policy change since then appears to be the replacement of Skills for Life qualifications for adult learners with Functional Skills from 2012 (Taylor, 2012).

As explained in Chapter 3 (Methodology), more recent statements of policy for adult literacy education in England proved difficult to locate and it would appear that there has been little major new policy for adult literacy education in England since the move to Functional Skills qualifications. Adult literacy has received some attention since then, but not on the scale of the Skills for Life Initiative. A number of government publications, however, include some mention of adult literacy, although, in some cases, only briefly and most documents cover numeracy in addition to literacy. The two subjects are rarely addressed separately.

Most of the policy to which I refer in this chapter is that of the UK Coalition Government (2010 to 2015) and in the majority of cases, the Government departments responsible for the policy, such as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, are now closed. A lengthy search for documents suggested that there has been no major new policy specifically for adult literacy education since the Conservative Government took

office in 2015. The focus of more recent policy making appears to be on younger learners rather than older adults, as seen in the policy paper on Further Education and Training (published in December 2012 and updated in May 2015), a document outlining a variety of policy changes for younger learners, including the requirement for students leaving school without achieving a minimum of a grade C in GCSE English and maths to continue to pursue these subjects (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2015).

Six documents were eventually identified for inclusion in the policy analysis. The one that provides the most recent expression of policy in relation to adult literacy education is Adult Literacy and Numeracy: Government response to the House of Commons

Business Innovation and Skills Select Committee. Fifth Report of Session 2014-15.

The Select Committee’s 2014 inquiry into adult literacy and numeracy intended to identify the reasons why so many people in the country were still facing difficulties with literacy (and numeracy) and to find ways of addressing this. The response claims to explain how the Government will address the Committee’s recommendations (although it did not agree with all of them) and thus provides an indication of its policy on adult literacy education. This document forms the key text in the policy analysis. I then consider two more recent documents which briefly mention literacy, the Department for Education’s Post-16 Reform Plan and Implementing the Further

Education and Skills Reform Plan (both published in 2016).

A number of older publications were also included in the analysis because the policy to which they relate is still in operation. These include two documents relating to Functional Skills qualifications, Functional Skills: the facts (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2010) and Functional Skills Criteria for English (Ofqual, 2011). Although somewhat dated, and despite the Government’s current preference for GCSEs rather than Functional Skills (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2014) this document still has currency. The interviews carried out with adult literacy practitioners as part of my research revealed that Functional Skills is still the policy influencing their practice in the majority of cases.

The final document considered is New Challenges, New Chances: Further Education

Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011), which is of significance because it proposed a number of policy actions, including the ‘re-establishment’ of the terms ‘English’ (and ‘maths’) within adult education (ibid., p.11).

The documents chosen for analysis were written and published between 2010 and 2016 and, as discussed in greater detail in Chapter 1, this was a period marked by falling rates of participation in adult education (Department for Education, 2017; Clancy and Holford, 2018) alongside a continuing interest in adult literacy. Concern for adult literacy around this time is illustrated by, for example, a NIACE inquiry which found that, ten years after the launch of Skills for Life, a significant proportion of England’s adult population (over five million people) still had insufficient literacy skills to allow them to ‘function effectively in modern society’ (NIACE, 2011a, p.3). There was also sufficient interest in adult literacy (and numeracy) for a government Select Committee inquiry to be held (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2014) but the outcome reflected more of a commitment to continuing some aspects of existing provision rather than the development of new policy. Additionally during this period, the results of the OECD’s PIAAC (Programme for the Assessment of Adult Competencies) survey were released (2013). The survey, which included literacy, revealed that England fared relatively badly compared to some other countries. However, although it led to some debate about literacy in the media, up to present has had little impact on policy (Yasukawa, Hamilton and Evans, 2017).

This was also a period of reform within the Further Education and Skills sector. As outlined in Chapter 1, some of the New Labour Government’s interest in educational reform continued under the Coalition administration that succeeded it in 2010, although this was more often related to reduction in provision and cuts in funding rather than development and expansion (Fisher and Simmons, 2012; Whitty and Wisby, 2016). The implications of this for adult education, in particular, are seen in the reduction of funding for Skills for Life provision, which had been a ‘significant’ policy initiative (Ade-Ojo and Duckworth, 2017, p. 399) making a ‘huge and unprecedented’ impact (Hodgson et al., 2007, p.17). Cuts in public funding led to its eventual replacement with the same Functional Skills qualifications which were already in existence for younger learners. Seen by some commentators as an attempt to align

school and adult education (Burgess and Hamilton, 2011, p.13), the move took place alongside a number of wider reforms in the Further Education and Skills sector for learners aged over nineteen, although it is argued that these were directed more towards the education of younger learners and the unemployed (Clancy and Holford, 2016) and were concerned with the country’s economic recovery (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011b). The reforms also included teacher training for the sector, with bursaries and new Continuing Professional Development opportunities for teachers of GCSE maths and English in the sector, though this would mostly benefit 16 to 19 learners (Zaidi at al., 2018). Despite the reforms within the sector and a continuing role for adult literacy outside Government (as explained earlier in this chapter) there was, however, little specific policy interest in adult literacy education, with more policy focus on the education of younger learners rather than adults.

In order to identify perceptions of literacy within the policy texts, the documents with significant content relating to literacy were analysed using Wordsmith Tools 6.0 lexical analysis software to identify the frequency with which words occur in a text, the contexts within which they occur and to highlight key words (Scott, 2015). Where documents only included a brief coverage of literacy, such as a paragraph or two, this initial analysis stage was omitted. As explained in Chapter 3 (Methodology), this initial analysis was followed by a more in depth study of the documents using an approach similar to Fairclough’s (2003) which includes analysis of a text on a number of different levels; linguistically, identifying features such as sentence types and structure, lexical choice, use of modal verbs and persuasive techniques and also at an ‘interdiscursive’ level identifying recurring themes in different discourses (Taylor, 2004). An example of this analysis can be found in Appendix 9.

In the next section of the chapter I consider the findings from analysis of the key documents included in the policy analysis.

Adult Literacy and Numeracy: Government Response to the House