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Peter Black and South Wales West Liberal DemocratsRepresenting Aberavon, Bridgend, Gower, Neath, Ogmore, Port Talbot, and Swansea |
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Assembly Government must do more on numeracy and literacy for 16-19 year olds.
September 28, 2006 4:36 PM
The Welsh Assembly Government needs to grasp the nettle so as to improve literacy and numeracy amongst 16 to 19 year olds, the Welsh Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson, Peter Black, has said.
Mr. Black was speaking in response to an Estyn report that found that 45% of learners in work-based learning need help with literacy and 51% with numeracy. In further education colleges, 19% of the learners surveyed have literacy needs, while 45% have numeracy needs. These findings reflect the views of employers' organisations who have complained that they need to re-educate young people in basic skills when they recruit them straight from school or college.
Estyn argue that basic skills initiatives are helping people to improve, but they do not yet involve enough people to tackle the skills gap fully, or to make significant numbers of people more employable than in the past. The inspections body say that improvements are needed in the way providers assess and monitor learners' progress and that the best way of doing this is through individual support and regular feedback. But only half of the providers surveyed offer this. Estyn are recommending that providers find ways for more learners to access one-to-one support.
"Although Estyn has raised this issue by way of a report on work-based learners and Further Education Colleges, it is nevertheless one on which the Assembly Government needs to take a lead," said Mr. Black. "This is becoming an issue with employers and possibly holding back young people in finding employment."
"I would like to see the Minister set out a clear action plan to deal with literacy and numeracy issues that involves more resources for individual student support and better direction to education providers on how to identify problems and tackle them."
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