family literacy

U.K. Report: Millions of Children Held Back by Their Parents’ Poor Basic Skills

/ The Old Crank

The U.K.’s National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) has just released a report that serves as something of a response to the latest international survey of adult basic skills conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), aka PIAAC (the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies). Adults in England and Wales generally scored below average in the survey—especially among 16-24 year-olds.

The NIACE’s Inquiry into Family Learning was launched about a year ago to look at the impact of family learning and “develop new thinking and to influence public policy.” The Inquiry commissioners’ report, Family Learning Works, cites a strong link between children’s success in school and their parent’s educational attainment and suggest that learning opportunities for the entire family should be an integral to the country’s strategies to raise children’s attainment in school. They argue that investing in family learning programs would save money in the long run by cutting back on the need for other government programs that serve vulnerable families.

In the forward to the report, the Chair of the Inquiry writes:

“The recent results of the OECD’s survey of adult skills show that parents’ educational attainment has a stronger-than-average impact on adults’ proficiency in both literacy and numeracy. Adults whose parents have low levels of education are eight times more likely to have poor proficiency in literacy than adults whose parents had higher levels of education. Surely it is a moral outrage that a nation such as ours should be in this position. Evidence shows that family learning could increase the overall level of children’s development by as much as 15 percentage points for those from disadvantaged groups. Family learning has multiple positive outcomes for adults and children, for families and communities. It could, in one generation, change the lives of a whole generation. We would be foolish to miss such an opportunity.” (my emphasis)

Low Literacy Households

/ The Old Crank

Interesting comment to this Walt Gardner column in Education Week on the role of parents in literacy development:

The solution is to immerse children from low literacy households in literacy rich environments from as early an age as possible.

Unless you are planning to remove children from their homes entirely, children from low literacy households are still going to spend the majority of their time outside of those literacy rich environments.

Addressing Adult Literacy: “A Key Step to Ensuring That All Young People Become Literate”

/ The Old Crank

From Reaching Full Literacy in Pakistan by 2025, a report commissioned by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party Chairman Imran Khan released this week:

While it is tempting to argue that the priority is to ensure that no child leaving primary education is illiterate, the evidence from both Pakistan and elsewhere is that adult illiteracy has a direct effect on the performance of the young. In effect, addressing adult illiteracy is a key step to ensuring that all young people become literate, especially as adult illiteracy is one reason why children drop out of school early. (my emphasis)

This Is the Way It Should Work Everywhere

/ The Old Crank

Education leaders in Biddeford, Maine have come up with a great idea (reported in the Biddeford-Saco-Old Orchard Beach Courier): let’s take our early childhood education leaders and put them in charge of adult education as well.

If the people accountable for early childhood education were also in charge of our adult education system, I think we’d start to see adult literacy more thoughtfully integrated into school readiness strategies, as well as a stronger push for adult literacy outcomes that are more closely tied to the role that parents and other caregivers play in the literacy development of their children. (And the evidence continues to build that this is one of the key strategies we should be taking to address early literacy development.)

There are, of course, many great family literacy program models that do the kinds of things described here, but what appears to be unique and encouraging about this is that it’s a district-wide strategy.