Keynote Address: Elizabeth Hanson

The Basic Skills Agency

Bio: Elizabeth Hanson is Assistant Director at the Basic Skills Agency, which is the national development agency for literacy and numeracy in England and Wales. Liz has been at the agency for four years, and heads up a regional development unit for the north of England that monitors and develops programs in family literacy and numeracy. She is working to develop programs suitable for 14 to 16 year olds and programs suitable for boys. She is also collaborating with specialist schools - those which have specialties like technology, sports, languages and so on - to determine how these schools can be used to attract adults into basic skills programs.

The Basic Skills Agency is an independent registered charity that is supported by a government grant and acts as a development agency. The Agency has existed for 25 years, working solely with adults for the first 20 years, and expanding to work with families and children since then.

The Agency's mission is to help raise standards of basic skills in England and Wales. They define basic skills narrowly, as those required to participate as a citizen: the ability to read, write and speak in English, and to use mathematics at a level necessary to function and progress at work and in society in general.

The aims of the Agency are to advocate, innovate and develop. Funding of programs is done through a separate organization called the Further Education Funding Council. The Agency is a source of national expertise in the issue of basic skills education and strives to keep the issue on the national agenda, while supporting innovation and testing of new approaches.

The Agency works by invitation from bodies that have an interest in developing basic skills programs, including schools, colleges, training providers, local and regional government bodies, and community health and housing organizations. At the same time, though the Agency works with and is funded by government, its independence and authority as a source of expertise allows them to critique and advocate improvement to government policy and programs.

The Agency's work has been underpinned by research and studies which have allowed them to convince government toward action as well as demonstrate which policies are appropriate.

A recent survey determined that about 22% of the population of the UK have below functional levels of literacy and numeracy. About 13% have skills just below the threshold which would require some home-study or a little instruction to correct. Another 4.5% have some skills and would need temporary support to bring them up to the threshold. The rest have serious skills shortages that would need intensive support for a longer period of time.