Skills for Life

Skills for Life (also known as basic, core or essential skills) are functional English and maths up to Level 2 (GCSE). The Government’s Skills Strategy, launched in 2003, also identified ICT within this category and as a key enabler for the development of the other skills.

Many people, associate the term, ‘basic skills’, with being completely unable to read, write or speak English. Although there are many people in the UK who struggle with these skills, very few people have no literacy, numeracy or spoken English skills whatsoever. However, in employment terms any sort of Skills for Life limitations have serious implications for the individual and the economy.

In England 5.2m adults have literacy levels below the levels required to achieve a GCSE grade D-G, while 6.8m adults are estimated to have difficulties in adding/subtracting using 3 digit numbers (numeracy skills below Entry Level 3). A total of 15m adults have skills at the same low level and have difficulties with fractions, decimals and simple percentages

The Skills for Life Strategy Unit estimates that at least half of those with poor basic skills are in employment and yet evidence shows that basic literacy and numeracy skills are critically important to performance at work. In line with vocational and higher level skills issues, employers have a key role to play in establishing opportunities through which employees can improve their literacy and numeracy skills.
www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus/workplace

Britain lags behind many other European countries, including our economic competitiors, in terms of the literacy and numeracy skills of our workforce. (Skills for Life – Make it your business employer toolkit, DfES, 2004)

The important thing to bear in mind about Skills for Life is that just about everyone, whatever educational advantages they have had, has aspects of these skills where they don’t feel confident: it might be reading 24-hour timetables, spelling unusual words, using commas or speaking in public. Skills for Life is not about ‘Us and Them’ – people who have Skills for Life support needs and people who don’t: we all have support needs of some kind, so we’re talking about ‘Us and Us’.

Most people have a ‘spiky profile’ of skills, with strong and weak areas: someone may have very limited literacy skills but manage their money highly effectively, for example. In the same way, graduates in technological subjects will have very high technical skills but may struggle to spell words, whereas a politics graduate may have problems with numeracy skills. So even if your organisation employs only graduates, it is important to consider SfL training needs. Employers may not be aware of Skills for Life support needs, as most of us develop strategies for coping with aspects where we are less confident. However, if we do not address Skills for Life needs, they can have a substantial impact in business.