The term "literacy" embraces listening, speaking, reading, writing and numeracy. It also includes personal development and the promotion of self-esteem, confidence and critical reflection. The importance of literacy to full participation in economic, social, civic and cultural life is self-evident. Of all the disadvantages faced by people, problems with literacy and numeracy can have the most profound effect in excluding individuals from participation in many walks of life. Things we take for granted – reading a newspaper, shopping for groceries, knowing the rules of the road, filling in application forms, going to a bank – can all be major hurdles for adults with literacy difficulties. They are compounded by low self-esteem, embarrassment and a fear of meeting the learning challenge. Literacy problems can have a pervasive negative influence on the quality of an individual's life. People who have literacy difficulties frequently experience a poor quality of life. Their ability to understand and engage in communication is severely limited in an age where electronic media rely, to an increasing extent, on high standards of literacy. Their ability to gain employment is restricted and they are generally confined to low-paid, unskilled work that often fails to allow them to give expression to the full range of their talents.
Furthermore, people with literacy difficulties frequently have to refuse promotion because they are not equipped for the literacy demands that promotion almost inevitably brings. They have difficulty travelling independently because they need to be able to read signs, maps and timetables. It is very difficult to envisage a person functioning effectively in almost any sphere of life without a modicum of reading and writing skills. I am deeply appreciative of the importance of literacy for the individual. However, literacy development is also a vital social issue, because literacy standards have major implications for social and economic development.
The social context of literacy development can be viewed from a variety of perspectives. Many of the information-based industries that have been attracted to Ireland in the past two decades rely heavily on the availability of a highly literate, well-educated workforce. On the other hand, people with low levels of literacy need support and encouragement from their immediate families and friends and the learning community of which they are part. Adult literacy is not simply a matter for Government or for the Department of Education and Science. It is a matter for the entire community – for families, employers and trade unions. While the Government is responsible for putting a high quality structure in place for the delivery of education, the co-operation of the community and the integrated support of the other agencies are essential to the successful implementation of educational policy in this sphere.
Clearly there is considerable scope for expanding adult literacy services and a number of imperatives exist for expanding the current level of service. First, approximately two thirds of the adult population did not progress beyond lower secondary education. We know that low education levels and low literacy levels go hand in hand. Second, the availability of educated young people has been exhausted in the course of recent economic and employment growth. Further economic growth will depend largely on the extent to which the skills of older workers can be improved.
A group representative of the Department of Education and Science, FÁS and other agencies has submitted recommendations on how literacy services might target unemployed people in particular. Other socially disadvantaged groups will also be catered for. However, literacy education will also need to be provided for groups of people with some literacy skills but with relatively little education. Ways and means of attracting such people back to education must be found. Many are in full-time employment, so perhaps there is scope for a partnership approach on the part of employers and trade unions in order to facilitate their employees and members in improving their education levels.
The Green Paper published in November 1998 ranks addressing low levels of literacy and numeracy as a top priority within adult education and proposes that investment in this area should increase on a phased basis to a minimum of £10 million per annum. We have made significant progress in that direction and recent increases will enable the adult literacy service to be developed and expanded further in the period ahead. The Green Paper also recommends the phased development of a back to education initiative for adults who have not completed upper second level education. My Department is drafting a White Paper on education which will be ready for publication early in the new year.
Using adult education as a means of combating social exclusion is a feature of the national development plan. During the period of the plan £1,027 million will be spent on programmes such as Youthreach, VTOS and post-leaving certificate courses. In particular this funding will target people with few, if any, educational qualifications and those who need to upgrade their skills. Almost £74 million is being allocated to an adult literacy strategy which, it is hoped, will see 100,000 people taking part in literacy programmes in the lifetime of the plan.
The results of the OECD survey on adult literacy showed that we live in a country where one quarter of the adult population has limited literacy skills, where older people had substantially lower levels of literacy than young people, where people who scored low on literacy tended to have less education, where twice as many unemployed people had low literacy levels than those in employment and where there is a strong association between low literacy levels and low income. The report also showed that many of those with poor literacy skills are not aware of this fact themselves. There is also a lack of awareness of the need to improve skills among the employed, as only 5 per cent of people indicated that poor literacy skills impeded their advancement. Another major finding in the survey was that those with the lowest levels of education are least likely to participate in adult education and training.
Action has been taken to address the problems identified in the OECD report. I have been asked to ensure there is a co-ordinated Government response to this priority issue and the resources available for adult literacy have been increased. The adult literacy budget has increased almost sixfold from a disgracefully low base of £850,000 when this Government took office to £5.665 million this year. Funds in this area will increase to over £7.825 million next year and will be supplemented by a budget for programme development and a pilot adult guidance service. The Green Paper on adult education made clear that our top adult education priority was addressing low levels of literacy and numeracy. The additional funding allocated to adult literacy has been used to set up a special adult literacy development fund which is administered by the vocational education committees. We will build on these developments in future.
Since we took office the number of people availing of adult literacy services has doubled from 5,000 to 10,000 per annum. Programmes for specific groups such as refugees, travellers, foreign nationals and those with special needs have also been developed. Programmes integrating the work of the FÁS-funded community employment scheme and the adult literacy service have also been developed and are currently being expanded by FÁS in each FÁS region on a pilot basis.
The Government is also committed to breaking the link between low literacy skills and unemployment. An interdepartmental working group on literacy for the unemployed has been established and is to make recommendations on the delivery of a targeted service to address the literacy and numeracy needs of the unemployed. A key goal will be to enhance interagency co-operation, to ensure a closer integration of services on an area basis, to increase opportunities for the pursuit of adult education and training at a basic level and to increase linkages and referral across programmes. These issues are at the heart of the review of the programme for Government. They underpin the approach of Government to using education as a key tool to fight poverty.
There is no doubt that education can make a major difference to a person's life chances – the difference between inclusion and exclusion. The longer a person spends in the education system, the better his or her literacy skills and overall employment and earning potential should be. Primary education is the highest education level of 40 per cent of those over 45. In contrast, over 80 per cent of the schooling cohort now completes second level education. This represents significant progress compared to previous decades, but the Government intends to further increase participation up to completion of senior cycle education. I recently launched an evaluation report on the radio series "Literacy Through the Airwaves", which consisted of a series of literacy programmes broadcast by the commercial radio station, Tipp FM. Materials for the classes were produced and supplied by the National Adult Literacy Agency and the series also involved the co-operation of the vocational education committees of Tipperary North and South Ridings and the active participation of the adult literacy centres, which are funded by the vocational education committees. The aim of the project was to design, produce and deliver a distance learning programme in adult basic education, consisting of a series of radio programmes supported by a printed study pack and by telephone communication with an adult literacy tutor. This was designed to help adults to improve their reading and writing skills in the privacy of their homes.
The pilot phase of "Literacy Through the Airwaves" has demonstrated that radio is a potentially powerful resource both in assisting literacy learners to access help and improve their skills and in providing a learning resource for learners, tutors and literacy schemes in maximising the possibilities which the ongoing expansion of the sector is currently undergoing. It is our intention to mainstream that pilot scheme immediately.
Building on the success of "Literacy Through the Airwaves", we have decided to develop literacy through television. A contract was recently awarded by the Department for the development of a series of 12 literacy programmes for television which will be broadcast next September. The Department is seeking to break new ground in educational broadcasting by combining best practice in adult education with the highest quality television production values. It wants the television literacy programmes to deliver tuition directly to people with a range of literacy difficulties, raising awareness of the extent of the problem while honouring the integrity of potential and real learners and students.
While we are aware of the scale of the adult literacy problem, significant progress has been and will continue to be made in addressing this issue. The measures I have described are being implemented in the context of a series of initiatives being introduced in primary and post-primary schools which will ensure that as time goes on the number of people coming into the workforce and adulthood with literacy difficulties will be progressively fewer.