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Basic Skills
Many people who are homeless do not (yet) have the basic skills necessary to find work or undertake training. Many people have difficulty with reading, writing and numeracy. These barriers may have played a part in people's becoming homeless, and certainly make it more difficult to access the support they need, and to fill in forms and applications. This section explores some good practice in providing basic or essential skills training.
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What are basic skills?
Basic skills is the term used to describe key skills of literacy and numeracy. Increasingly, some IT skills are a requisite for most work and learning, so these are covered in this section too. For people who have been out of work for a while, or who are starting work for the first time, these skills may need revisiting, and for many IT skills are a whole new world!
- The Basic Skills Agency has merged with the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education, and is working in conjunction with TRIBAL to form the Alliance for Lifelong Learning. They publish resources and training materials on a wide range of basic skills programmes.
Innovative approaches
Fortunately, there are innovative ways of improving skills in these areas, many of which build on activities for engagement.
A new scheme links the beautiful game with improving basic skills, called Heading for Success. Football clubs from all over the country have linked up with local colleges to deliver a programme of learning that differs from traditional methods. Participants might find themselves writing match reports, reading commentary on matches or working out transfer fees. Courses are free and open to over 16s.
- The Oxford Homeless College is an innovative virtual college, covering several homelessness services in the Oxford area. The website enables learners to access short courses online in a range of subject areas, from literacy and numeracy to languages, art, health, sciences. Courses are divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced, and whole interactive lessons take place online. The site also provides information on homelessness services, advice and signposting.
Basic skills qualifications
The Open College Network provides accredited qualifications in basic skills, from entry level to Level 3, as well as a range of job-specific qualifications. Courses are delivered by accredited providers, which can include colleges, community centres, or voluntary organisations. You can find out about becoming an accredited provider, or find your nearest provider by following this link.
- Some adult literacy and numeracy qualifications are available FREE online. One such provider is TBG Learning who run online nationally accredited qualifications in literacy and numeracy as well as other courses, in conjunction with JobCentrePlus.
- Another provider, used by Anchor House is Move On. Aggrie Chikiwa, a teacher at Anchor House says:
"We teach basic numeracy and literacy, but we are renaming the classes maths and English. What we teach is not numeracy, it is maths, and it is important to show students those connecting elements between things we teach. When you teach literacy, we are really teaching English, as a language, with the culture that goes with that. The recipients of the courses didn’t see the meaning of “literacy” or “numeracy” – they would say “this is maths like we did at school” – now they see the meaning of it and the sense."
"English and maths are taught up to Levels 1 and 2. Level 1 is equivalent to a D or E at GSCE, and Level 2 to an A, B or C at GCSE. We use an online package called Move On which has teaching and testing online. Anchor House is a testing centre, so people can complete exams here, and attain qualifications. The package is free, and you can find your nearest centre on the website."
Materials
- The Basic Skills Agency publish a booklet of ideas for teaching money and maths skills to adult learners called Financial Literacy for adult learners. The resource is free (P&P payable). Designed to improve literacy as well as numeracy, and budgeting and life skills, the resource covers: money and work, all about cards, saving, rights and responsibilities and making choices. The numeracy-based modules included are: banking, bills and financial records, travel, budgeting and all about cash.
BHT: A Case Study
BHT (Brighton Housing Trust)'s Learning Links programme provides good practice examples in basic skills training. Link 1 takes place at City College Brighton & Hove. Link 1 is an 18-week course and participants can choose to take either literacy or numeracy or both. Classes take place for 2 hours on a Tuesday (Literacy) and 2 hours on a Thursday (Numeracy). Participants work towards nationally recognised qualifications starting from Entry Levels 1, 2 or 3 up to Levels 1 and 2. Generally, students start at Entry Level 3 and achieve Level 1 or 2. Participants receive all the benefits of being a college student, such as NUS cards and free access to the college computer suite, while experiencing life at a mainstream educational establishment. Read more about Learning Links in the training courses section of this site.