Title: The literacyABET situation
1Beyond ABET the varieties of options
What do the taxonomies say?
John Aitchison Centre for Adult Education,
University of KwaZulu-Natal
2The literacy/ABET situation
- No decrease in number or percentage of
functionally illiterate (less than grade 7)
adults. - About 32 of adult population is functionally
illiterate.
3The bad news
- State, business and NGO literacy and ABET
provision have failed to significantly reduce
illiteracy in South Africa. Formal ABET GETC
outputs have been weak. - The illiterate and uneducated do not have the
resources to educate themselves they have
access to less than 4 of South Africas wealth. - Bottom line Little change for the undereducated!
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5The National Skills Development Strategy output
- Targets March 2005
- Increase from 60 to 70 of workers having a NQF
1 qualification - Targeted number 905,000. Actual number reached
435,000 (2001/02 5079, 2002/03 111,367,
2003/04 433,437) but unclear what these NQF 1
qualifications are - 80,000 learnerships. Actual 69,000. Disputes
about effectiveness and retention
6The unrealised vision
- Adult (basic) education is a right (of the
empowered citizen). - A good basic education is the foundation for
work, training and career progression (of the
citizen earning a livelihood). - An educated workforce is a requirement for a
prosperous democratic society.
7New directions for ABET?
- Minister of Education concludes at ABET Rountable
on 29 April 2005 that neither the existing
formal ABET system nor the more non-formal SANLI
has delivered. - She argues that ABET had become utilitarian and
narrowand had sought to make adults like
children we are teaching schooling! ABET
would need to be reconceptualised.
8Formal Adult FET
- The curious policy silence about AFET in Public
Adult Learning Centres - Waiting for the FET Colleges
- Unemployment and unemployability
- The need for a genuine adult matric and a
genuine adult equivalent of a school leaving
certificate
9What provision options are there?
- Literacy programmes
- Adult Basic Education
- Adult Basic Education and Training
- Adult National Senior Certificate
- Adult Further Education and Training
- Community College
- Distance and e-learning
- Assessment driven programmes
10Taxonomies of adult education
- Literacy (and ABET?)
- Emancipation ( radical?)
- Compensation ( reform/redress?)
- Continuing (the rich get richer?)
- Enrichment (the rich have cultured fun?)
- Vocational (in whose interests?)
11Remember NEPI?
- (Radical) adult education emancipatory
- Continuing education follows on initial
- Non-formal education formal is too expensive
- Lifelong learning from literacy to enrichment
academic and vocational
12Types of literacy programme
- Literacy campaigns
- Centralised control with strong political backing
- Usually inefficient and effects not long lasting
- Functional literacy programmes
- Link literacy to livelihoods, skills training and
development - Useful but small scale and criticised as
domesticating - Formal primary school equivalence basic education
- Usually run by formal education departments
- Time equivalence a problem but successful
intensive examples - Innovative participative programmes
- Usually NGO or church run and small scale
- Some evidence of interest in Reflect method
13What is formal?
- Formal designed certificated (recognised)
- Non-formal intentional (planned) but not
certificated (may or may not be recognised) - Informal unplanned, accidental, incidental
Serious confusion of terms formal academic
certificated non-formal non-academic
certificated Informal non-formal
14Relationships of literacy to training
- Literacy is a prerequisite for further training
in income-generating activities (people seeking
occupational training are required to learn how
to read, write and calculate first). - Literacy (valued in itself) may be followed by
separate livelihood training (for which literacy
may not necessarily be a prerequisite). - Literacy instruction follows after livelihood
training (the usefulness of numeracy, along with
writing and reading, is discovered through
learning a livelihood and learners may then seek
or demand literacy instruction or be encouraged
to seek it). - Livelihood and literacy are integrated and
engaged in simultaneously (with the literacy
content often initially derived from livelihood
vocabulary and discourse). - Livelihood and literacy training are both valued
and take place in parallel but separately.
15Which option is most effective?
- Oxenham (2002) argues that the most effective
are - Programmes that combine livelihood training
with literacy - Literacy programmes with components of income
generating activities or occupational training - Occupational training programmes with components
of literacy and numeracy
16What conditions are necessary?
- Competent, reliable and properly supported
instructors - Programmes well adapted to the interests and
conditions of the learners - Livelihood training drives literacy content and
instruction - Agencies focused on livelihoods rather than
agencies focused on education - Training in savings and credit and organising
access to credit to reinforce success in both
livelihoods and literacy - Working with already established groups of
learners - For the average learner, a minimum 360 hours of
tuition in reading, writing and calculating
17What is literacy? A reprise
- The problem/challenge of fundamentals
- The problem of being context bound and the need
for decontextualisation and recontextualisation - We must not bluff ourselves, adequate modern
literacy is cognitively demanding and takes time
to develop.
18À life skills programme
19What are life skills?
- Psycho-social and interpersonal skills that
enable people to communicate and act effectively,
make informed decisions, and cope with and manage
their lives and environments in a healthy and
productive way - Other life skills are livelihood related skills
that enable people to pursue individual and
household economic goals. Such life skills help
people become capable of income generation and
strengthen their capacity to gain access to and
to benefit from vocational and technical training.
20The life skills context
- Life skills are always used in a social context
and the programme should deal with life skills
relevant to four main contexts - 1. Personal, family and social life
- 2. Workplace and informal income generation
- 3. Institutional settings
- 4. Community and civic life
- Within these social contexts we use a range of
basic education skills, including literacy,
numeracy and life skills. - The programme will emphasise life skills related
to readiness for training
21Planned courses
- Personal growth and self management
- Basic personal, family and work related written
communication - Basic text information finding skills
- Practical numeracy skills
- Employment seeking life skills
- Basic economic literacy
- English speaking and listening interactions
- Basic business writing skills
- Communication and telephone etiquette
- Safety at home and work
- Health, sexuality and parenting
22Example of a course Money and business literacy
- Basic financial management of the family budget
- Buying on credit and understanding interest and
loan sharks - Basic concepts of a business
- The basics of planning and starting one's own
business - Using a bank
- Negotiating and contracting
- Stock management
- Marketing
- Keeping business records
- Basic labour law
23Example of a courseBasic text using skills
- This would consolidate and apply the learner's
existing literacy skills - Understanding the parts of a form, document or
book - Using alphabetic and page ordering systems, e.g.
in dictionaries, telephone directories, indexes,
filing systems, ordered lists, etc. - Using diaries and calendars
- Basic map reading and their use to work out
routes and distances - Knowing where to find information using newspaper
advertisements, telephone and other directories - Using public libraries and other sources of
public information - Basic computer/terminal keyboard awareness
- Understanding informational diagrams, e.g. family
trees, flow charts
24Some propositions on assessment
- Standards/criteria need to be developed for the
monitoring of reading and writing. - Regular national testing of literacy and numeracy
levels is needed (via a suitable agency). - We need a good national ABE exam and a good
national adult senior certificate equivalent (cf
the GED) - Quality control of literacy and ABET providers is
best managed by external examinations and/or
testing. - All providers should be expected to demonstrate
that their students can exhibit successful
literacy skills in context bound situations.
25Some propositions on regulation
- Why do we want to regulate what is the problem?
- Will our solution actually solve the problem?
- Is over regulation self-defeating?
- The Bureau of Standards model
- The iNdlovu Partnership for Lifelong Learning
model