The National Adult Literacy Agency

The National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) is an independent organisation that:

  • is the voice of adults wishing to improve their literacy skills, and
  • is committed to raising adult literacy levels.

Our mission

Our mission is to be the voice of adult literacy in Ireland and, with our partners, influence policy and practice to support people in developing their literacy.

NALA’s vision

We want Ireland to be a place where adult literacy is a valued right and where everyone can both develop their literacy and take part more fully in society.

How NALA define literacy

Literacy involves listening and speaking, reading, writing, numeracy and using everyday technology to communicate and handle information. But it includes more than the technical skills of communications: it also has personal, social and economic dimensions. Literacy increases the opportunity for individuals and communities to reflect on their situation, explore new possibilities and initiate change.

NALA contribution to “Better Literacy and Numeracy for Children and Young People: A draft plan to improve literacy and numeracy in schools” (November 2010).

NALA is delighted to contribute to improving the literacy and numeracy of children and young people by providing an input on the draft plan entitled “Better Literacy and Numeracy for Children and Young People: A draft plan to improve literacy and numeracy in schools” (November 2010).

NALA welcomes this plan asappropriate and timely. We support its strategic intent which recognises the key role of literacy and numeracy in a person’s life and the enormous impact that literacy difficulties have on a person’s life chances. This report acknowledges that literacy standards in primary schools have not changed in 30 years and outlines a number of targets and actions to impact on this.

NALA supports the draft plan and endorses the key elements of the plan, in particular:

  • the need for a whole-school commitment to redress gaps and issues;
  • the integration of literacy and numeracy across the curricula, involving all teachers;
  • the need for development of curricula and assessment processes and strategies;
  • the laying out of targets and actions;
  • the importance of supporting transitions from ECCE to primary school and from primary to secondary school;
  • the focus on initial and continuous education and training for teachers and practitioners;
  • the focus on the role parents and communities can play in contributing to higher literacy and numeracy standards for children and young people; and
  • the identification of mechanisms to carry out the plan.

NALA would like to make recommendations on nine areas which we believe should be consideredand included in the final plan. These recommendations primarily relate to chapters 7 Enabling parents and communities to support children’s literacy and numeracy developmentandchapter 5 Targeting available additional resources on learners at risk of failure to achieve adequate levels of literacy and numeracy. They are drawn from recent research with parents in Ireland and supported by further national and international research which follows after this section.[1]

1) Launch anational information campaign on the importance of literacy and numeracy throughout life

Findings show

  • A national media campaign should raise awareness of the importance of family literacy work. A series of TV programmes could model good family literacy practice, encourage participation in community-based programmes and disseminate useful support materials in an accessible format for those with unmet literacy needs.
  • A menu of (accredited) family literacy modules should be available to parents that recognises the needs of different parents and children. These modules would include: understanding how learning happens; early years language development; reading with children; fun and creativity in language, literacy and numeracy; computer skills as a basis for a digital approach to family literacy; communicating successfully with schools; dealing with bullying (and its negative impact on learning); strategies for family literacy with children who have specific learning difficulties/disabilities.
  • The DES should support the inclusion of family literacy in the interactive digital learning facility –

Recommendations

  • There should be a national promotion of the importance of strong literacy and numeracy skills and the need to constantly improve them throughout life and not just during formal schooling. The draft reports state that ‘there may be a mistaken sense that literacy and numeracy should be finished by the end of primary school’ (p42). It is our contention that it is an equally mistaken sense that literacy and numeracy should ever be considered finished. It is understood that ICT skills cannot be learnt only during school as ICT is constantly evolving. Similarly literacy and numeracy demands are also evolving and need to be developed in the context of school, the community and the workplace. Any efforts in this regard need to draw on the work of the National Reading Initiative and its evaluation, as well as existing campaigns aimed at adults coordinated by NALA.
  • There is an increasing interest in digital literacies and this offers new opportunities for online family literacy work as part of NALA’s interactive website
  • NALA’s TV campaign approach might usefully be used to increase awareness of family literacy issues, model good practice and encourage participation in local adult and family literacy learning opportunities.

2) Provide direct supports to parents to encourage them to support children’s language literacy and numeracy development

Findings show

  • Parents use all the skills they can muster to do family literacy work and this is particularly challenging for parents who themselves have unmet literacy issues. These parents suggest an intensive adult literacy programme as an initial step in dealing with their needs as key players in family literacy.
  • Parents felt fairly confident with the family literacy work that happens prior to formal schooling. They recognised that better information, knowledge and skills would allow them to be more strategic and effective in terms of encouraging language development.
  • Parents want to be consulted about the content of family literacy programmes as their needs are complex and change according to the age and number of children. Children with specific learning difficulties/disabilities require specialised support and parents need ongoing guidance with this demanding work.
  • All family literacy training needs to be supported and enabled with quality childcare provision.

Recommendations

  • National literacy policy should include an increased commitment to family literacy as a basis for improving chances of educational equality for both children and adults. Such policy should always be grounded in an analysis of the systemic roots of literacy disadvantage as this would give added credibility, motivation and optimism to participants and practitioners.
  • The plan should be enhanced to build more strategic and effective linkages between schools, families and communities. There should be increased resources targeted into this area which would move the DEIS family literacy programme from pilot level funding of €200,000 to the mainstream, covering all DEIS schools and VEC areas.
  • Parents’ willingness and motivation to do robust family literacy work should be recognised and adequately resourced, through appropriate family literacy training options, to meet the complex situations of disadvantaged families.
  • Parents with literacy needs should be offered access to a family literacy programme as a first stepping-stone back into learning. Where necessary, access to advice, guidance and counselling should be made available.

3) Ensure that parental engagement in children’s learning is integrated into each schools teaching and learning strategy and development plan

Findings show

  • When children began school, parents felt more distanced from their learning. Parents’ level of involvement and inclusion was determined by the school ethos and this in turn depended on the leadership provided by the school principal. We gathered evidence that the degree of home-school collaboration impacts on the quality of family literacy. Where schools work closely with parents there is greater clarity about how best to support children. In the best cases, schools provide family literacy materials for parents and run family literacy and numeracy sessions that help inform and guide parents.

Recommendations

  • Whilst meeting the needs of adult literacy learners, family literacy programmes and resources should reflect the content and processes recommended by Aistear and the Primary School Curriculum. In the light of proposals in the Draft National Plan for Literacy and Numeracy (DES, 2010) parents need to be informed about the process of literacy assessment in primary schools. At the same time the distinction between pedagogy and learning care work in the home should not be blurred.
  • A NALA, DES, IVEA partnership should work with DEIS schools in disadvantaged communities to access parents with unmet literacy needs and make a systematic community development model of family literacy training available to them in their locality. Fathers and mothers may initially want to learn in separate groups.

4) Support existing initiatives to link home, school and community literacy and numeracy initiatives

Findings show

  • Parents want opportunities for peer support and one group had access to this in the family room provided in their local DEIS school. The Home School Community Liaison coordinator in this school facilitated activities for parents that contributed to language, literacy and numeracy development. Family literacy training would be an important extension of this existing work.

Recommendation

  • Best home-school collaborative practice in DEIS schools should be recorded, analysed and disseminated in areas where parents are not included meaningfully in their children’s learning. The role of the successful HSCL coordinator in including adults with literacy needs should be explored. This suggests that all HSCL personnel have relevant adult literacy awareness training. Best practice DEIS primary schools should be investigated as a base for family literacy programmes with educationally disadvantaged parents.

5) Initial and continuous professional development for teachers

Findings show

  • Some teachers do not know how to engage or support parents to support their children’s school performance. Teachers and school leaders need to raise their capacity to progress family literacy programmes to better respond to literacy needs of school children.

Recommendation

  • This means enhancing initial and continuous training for teachers to cover family learning and family literacy developmentin order to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes for children. Included in this should be awareness of adult literacy problems, its causes and the consequences for individuals and their families. These suggestions relate specifically to actions arising from sections 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and 3.

6) Enhancing partnership between families, communities and schools

Findings show

  • While literacy and numeracy difficulties are evident across society, the issue is particularly prevalent among disadvantaged communities. Children from disadvantaged communities are more likely to have literacy difficulties, and the literacy gap widens as children progress through school. The plan must respond to this reality and include a more robust and specific element focusing on how schools, particularly those serving disadvantaged communities, can cooperate with children, parents and communities to redress this imbalance. This is absent in the proposals in section 5.

Recommendation

  • Develop in consultation guidelines on structured partnership between key stakeholders.

7) Integration of literacy and numeracy development across the curriculum

Findings show

  • The integration of literacy and numeracy across the curricula involving all teachers is a very effective whole-school/centre approach to literacy and numeracy. NALA work in relation to integrating literacy in further education and training includes research, guidelines and training. A large body of work has been completed with Community Training Centres.

Recommendation

  • The work and experience on integrating literacy in the further education and training sector should be examined with a view to sharing the existing resources for supporting approaches and actions in this area and should be considered for inclusion in the final version of the plan.

8)Sharing existing resources and expertise

Findings show

  • A literature review carried out this year by the UK National Research and Development Centre found very little evidence of effective partnership and coordination of public services in adult literacy, stating “Regarding coherent, cross-field policy action, observers in many countries will note a great deal of rhetoric around "joined-up" policy, but relatively limited cross-silo working, particularly at national level”.[2]

Recommendations

  • The sections on young people, Youthreach and EAL students could raise awareness about relevant adult literacy resources and approaches, for example is very little knowledge sharing between literacy experts working in the different sectors of education and training, both a national and local level. A recommendation to facilitate sharing between the relevant parties would be useful.
  • Building on the recommendation of the NESF (2008) report on child literacy, there is a need for a lifelong policy framework approach to literacy development and not just a consideration of children and young people. Many of the recommendations in the draft plan are equally relevant and necessary within the further education and training sector. There are missed opportunities in the draft plan to highlight the complementarity and overlap of resources between school based practitioners and those working on literacy development within the further education and training sector.
  • There should be greater emphasis on the role of libraries in the community to support parents and children develop a culture of reading. Libraries should be an integral part of each school’s education plan and strong partnerships should exist between every school and their local library.
  • The full range of family and community stakeholders should be supported to be aware of and involved in initiatives to raise literacy levels.

9) Overseeing the plan

Recommendation

  • The National Literacy and Numeracy Implementation Group and the National Literacy and Numeracy Forum should include representation and expertise from educationally disadvantaged families and/or the adult literacy sector.

Background information on family literacy

Children’s literacy development remains a pressing and critical issue.Over 30% of primary school children in disadvantaged areas suffer from severe literacy problems (ERC 2004), while 1 in 10 children leave primary school with a significant literacy difficulty (National Assessment of English Reading 2000). Standards of reading in Irish schools have not changed in 30 years, and educational disadvantage is being compounded. Two-thirds of pupils in the most disadvantaged schools achieved at or below the 20th percentile on standardised tests (compared to 20% nationally), and performance declined as pupils progressed through the school (NESF 2008).

25 years of various school-based programmes designed to tackle educational disadvantage and children’s performance have been described as having disappointing results (Irish Times, 20 June 2009). If standards of performance at school have not changed significantly in decades, more of the same will not change this, and there is a need for a more holistic approach to support learning in schools (Sticht 2008). Improving standards may be found inaddressing other factors that impact on learning and school performance such as support for education from parents and carers, family members and communities.

Family literacy provides a win-win scenario to policy makers. Family literacy programmes improve the literacy practices of parents and other family members. This has a very significant knock on effect on school performance of children. This offers potential opportunities to break inter-generational cycles of under-achievement by working with those families who do not, or may not know how, to best support their child’s learning.

What is Family Literacy?

The term family literacy describes:

  • The uses of literacy and numeracy within families and communities, especially activities which involve two or more generations;
  • Education programmes that help to develop literacy and numeracy learning in a family context.

The word family describes a relationship of care and support between different generations, usually over a long period. Families include children, teenagers and the people who look after them:

  • parents, foster-parents, step-parents or guardians;
  • grandparents; aunts and uncles;
  • brothers, sisters and cousins.

Family networks may be large or small and may include wider communities. Sometimes child-minders and residential care-workers fulfill similar roles to those of parents or guardians in relation to family learning. NALA defines ‘parents’ as adults who are in a long-term caring relationship with children and responsible for their well-being and development.

How can Family Literacy programmes help?

In order to further support effective literacy learning for adults and children, family literacy development work needs to be a key feature of both adult literacy provision and school outreach work. Family literacy programmes may be organised in conjunction with schools or in partnership with groups such as community development or training organisations, family resource centres, childcare or support for refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers. There is a need for schools to engage with family literacy and support family learning and adult learning initiatives led by other stakeholders.

Recognising the key role of learning at home and parental support for children’s learning, the Department of Education and Skills has taken a lead in promoting a strategy for the development of family literacy work as part of the DEIS initiative (2006 – 2010). Family literacy work helps to overcome the barriers to learning felt by some adults and children. This approach can recognise and build on the strengths of families and communities who feel marginalised or excluded from the expectations of school. Family literacy programmes bring new learners into adult literacy and community education and provide a key element in developing lifelong learning opportunities for all (NALA 2004; Brooks et al 1997).