Baroness Rebuck – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Rebuck on 2016-09-09.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the finding in the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee’s Fifth Report of Session 2014–15 that the ability to gain literacy and numeracy skills is a fundamental right of all adults, what steps they are taking to ensure that the one in six of the population with poor literacy skills have opportunities to gain at least entry level literacy skills.

Lord Nash

This Government understands the importance of strong literacy skills and makes English provision a priority for support within the adult skills system. We fully fund, through a statutory entitlement, all adults to achieve their first English GCSE at grade C or above as well as other qualifications which help them get to that level. We also support English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision, in addition to DCLG’s community-based programmes and investment in Syrian refugees’ English Language training through the Syrian resettlement programme.

This provision is available for a wide range of learners including:

• Prisoners, through the Offender Learning and Skills Service;

• Learners in the community, including through Family English, Maths and Language;

• People who need ESOL;

• Trainees as part of their traineeship;

• Apprentices as part of their apprenticeship;

• Jobseekers.

To enable these learners to improve their literacy skills, we have embedded English at the heart of all our major programmes. This means:

• Learners who did not achieve a good GCSE pass in English by the age of 16 are now required to continue to study the subject post-16;

• Since 2014/15, the English requirement for Intermediate Apprenticeships has been stronger, with all apprentices who have already achieved level 1 English having to work towards level 2;

• Since 2014/15, young people undertaking a traineeship have been required to study English unless they already have level 2 qualifications in the subjects;

We have reformed GCSEs to ensure they are more stretching and provide greater assurance of core literacy skills than the old GCSEs. In line with the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee recommendation, we recognise that some people are not ready to take GCSE so we are also improving the rigour and relevance of English Functional Skills qualifications, which are taken by many students and apprentices aged 16 and over. We have commissioned the Education and Training Foundation to revise the National Literacy (and Numeracy) Standards and reform Functional Skills with the new qualifications being delivered from September 2018.

To ensure high quality provision is delivered, we have invested over £30m over the past 3 years to improve the quality of the English (and maths) workforce in further education, driving forward improvements in governance and leadership.

To ensure prisoners have the opportunity to improve their literacy skills, Government accepted in principle the recommendations of the review led by Dame Sally Coates on prison education which will include developing a new curriculum for the teaching of basic literacy in prisons.

Lastly, we are undertaking a range of research to better understand where Government investment in English has the greatest impact and delivers value for money. As recommended by the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in their 14/15 report, Government is using behavioural insights to identify how to motivate adults to improve their English and encourage learners to keep studying once enrolled on a course. I am pleased to report that very positive trial results will be published shortly by the Behavioural Insights Team. This report includes trial findings working with the Army as a significant provider of workplace literacy training.