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Family literacy in Africa
BALID one-day conference

A one-day conference on family literacy in Africa took place at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London on November 24th 2007. This event was hosted by BALID in association with Education Action.

The aim of the day was to examine how family literacy programmes can improve both primary education and adult literacy cost-effectively.

Three elements were included:

1) a review of relevant research on family literacy in the UK;

2) operational details of how a local NGO, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Development and supported by international NGOs and agencies, can plan and deliver family literacy programmes;

3) discussion around the assessments of a programme's value.

Speakers:

• Professor Greg Brooks, Sheffield University

• Patrick Kiirya, LABE (Literacy and Basic Education, Ugandan NGO)

Professor Greg Brooks holds a chair of education at the University of Sheffield and since 1992 has been research director of the Sheffield arm of NRDC, the National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy. His research interests include family literacy, the initial teaching of reading and spelling, trends in educational attainment over time and the use of quantitative methods in educational research. Between 1967 and 1972 he taught at Kenyatta College, Nairobi.

In 1989 Patrick Kiirya founded LABE, the Ugandan Literacy and Basic Education NGO which in 2002 received the Noma literacy prize from Unesco. Its pioneering work on family literacy in Uganda is widely respected and has been supported from Comic Relief, Education Action International and DFID. Patrick is also Minister of Finance and Production for the Busoga Kingdom of Uganda, and a frequent speaker at international conferences on literacy.

This stimulating event provided an opportunity to review the development of family literacy and to discuss the evidence for the success of different models of family literacy in the UK and Uganda.

The BALID AGM took place immediately following the Family Literacy conference on November 24th 2007. A summary of the minutes will be available. Please contact admin@balid.org.uk for a copy of the Annual Report.

New directions in literacy and development
The BALID workshop, New Directions in Literacy and Development, signalled a number of changes in the direction of work in literacy and development.

Click here to read the report from this workshop.

UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2008

Education for All by 2015. Will we make it?

The sixth edition of the EFA Global Monitoring Report was published in November 2007. The EFA Global Monitoring Report is an annual publication prepared by an independent team based at UNESCO. It monitors progress towards the six Education for All goals adopted in Dakar, Senegal in 2000:

1) expand and improve early childhood care and education

2) provide free and compulsory universal primary education by 2015

3) equitable access to learning and life-skills programmes

4) achieve a 50% improvement in adult literacy rates

5) eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and at all levels by 2015

6) improve all aspects of the quality of education

Governments, the report finds, are neglecting adult literacy: worldwide 774 million adults – nearly 1 in 5 - lack basic literacy skills. More than three-quarters live in only 15 countries. Women’s literacy in particular has a strong influence on a child’s education and health yet they still account for 64% of adults who are not literate worldwide. On current trends 72 out of 101 countries for which projections were calculated will not succeed in halving adult illiteracy rates by 2015. (source, UNESCOPRESS)

For more details see www.efareport.unesco.org

Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme
The Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme (LAMP) based in the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) in Canada is developing measures that it is hoped will be more sensitive to qualitative issues than IALS and other international comparisons in the past. Uppingham Seminars, run by Professor Alan Rogers, has brought together statisticians and ethnographers to discuss these developments.Their reports are available on www.uppinghamseminars.org

Research Programme Consortia
Another institutional move likely to affect literacy work in the immediate future is the DfID initiative to run new Research Programme Consortia (RPCs) to generate development research programmes that will inform the international community as it acts to eradicate poverty. A number of BALID partners involved in literacy and development figure in some of these, especially under the heading of 'Theme 2: Improving the Quality of Education'. In addition, UNESCO is launching the Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) in more than 30 developing countries where the acquisition and use of literacy are still not accessible to major parts of the population.

Several other initiatives are also currently being pursued regarding cross-cultural learning about literacy approaches within adult education. These include the conference organized by Lancaster University which brought together practitioners from North and South, the work of the NRDC in the UK which has an explicit international dimension, the visits of DfES to India to view adult education work there; and the conferences run by the Literacy and Development Group of the University of East Anglia (UEA).

All of these - and other - developments represent a significant increase in attention to literacy in the context of development, and will have considerable implications for the work of BALID. In the light of this, the Executive Committee has a policy of inviting partner organisations to make presentations at BALID events that indicate their own current work in the field and, as appropriate, their relationship to such initiatives. This is an exciting and dynamic time in the field and BALID intends to continue to provide a forum for debate amongst practitioners and researchers.