The literacyABET situation - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 25
About This Presentation
Title:

The literacyABET situation

Description:

Formal Adult FET. The curious policy silence about AFET in Public Adult Learning Centres. Waiting for the FET Colleges. Unemployment and unemployability ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:36
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 26
Provided by: Ait86
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: The literacyABET situation


1
Beyond ABET the varieties of options
What do the taxonomies say?
John Aitchison Centre for Adult Education,
University of KwaZulu-Natal
2
The 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.

3
The 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!

4
(No Transcript)
5
The 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

6
The 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.

7
New 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.

8
Formal 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

9
What 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

10
Taxonomies 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?)

11
Remember 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

12
Types 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

13
What 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
14
Relationships 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.

15
Which 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

16
What 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

17
What 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.

18
À life skills programme
19
What 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.

20
The 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

21
Planned 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

22
Example 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

23
Example 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

24
Some 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.

25
Some 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
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com