Workplace basic skills courses boost taste for learning – but not productivity
15 April 2009
The government may believe that workplace literacy courses can boost productivity but employers are more sceptical, according to researchers.
Companies that introduce basic skills tuition tend to do so because they believe that it can increase the motivation and loyalty of staff, not because they expect any increase in output, finds a report from the Institute of Education, London.
There is also little evidence that employers think poor reading and writing skills are a problem among their own staff. "Policymakers often assume that poor basic skills are widespread and have a significant negative impact on workplace productivity," says Dr Andrew Jenkins, a member of the research team. "But we found little evidence that the employers in the workplaces we sampled were concerned about their employees' basic skills and did not expect gains in output or productivity as a result of improved literacy skills."
The team tracked 575 employees on government-funded literacy courses in 50 workplaces over three years. The aim was to find out whether such tuition resulted in long-term improvements in literacy skills, changed attitudes to education and better jobs for those who took the courses. The researchers also tried to establish whether there were benefits for employers, including productivity gains.
They found that workplace learning had the power to change individuals' attitudes to study and help them re-assess their ambitions and capabilities. Employees were more likely to undertake further education as a result of the training, either a recreational course in a subject such as painting, or a programme of study that would help them start a new career. Only non-native English speakers wanted to carry on improving their English.
Tests given one and two years after completion of the training showed moderate gains in participants' reading ability, with younger learners, women and those with English as a second language improving most.
The degree to which the courses benefited individuals was directly related to their belief in their ability to learn. Once on a course, "fragile" learners did as well as their colleagues, but they were less likely to sign up in the first place. While three-quarters stated that the course had made them feel differently about education, very few reported direct economic benefits. Only around one in ten said it would help them gain promotion or a better job, and a mere 2 per cent thought it would help them earn more money.
Earlier this month another Institute of Education academic, Professor Anna Vignoles, told an Institute of Fiscal Studies conference in Cambridge that "short, sharp" basic skills courses designed to improve adult literacy and numeracy were largely ineffective and would not improve Britain's economic competitiveness. The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills countered that the £5 billion the Government had invested in adult basic skills in recent years had been well spent.
However, this new report also suggests that most of the workplace courses were too short to have much effect on literacy. Unless people's jobs demanded and encouraged literacy, gains tended to be small and short-lived. It was only learners who used their skills both in and out of the workplace who showed consistent improvement. Most of the courses stopped as soon as the funding came to an end, typically after 30 hours, and only a small minority of employers offered any follow-up.
"Our research confirms the appetite for learning among many adults who have not found it possible to attend classes. It also underlines the importance of a far wider range of factors than wanting to improve performance or productivity. These include boosting confidence, helping children with their homework and pursuing interests outside work."
Dr Jenkins will present this report at the American Educational Research Association conference in San Diego on Wednesday 15 April 2009.
The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Teaching and Learning Research Programme, the biggest-ever investment in education research in the UK.
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Notes for editors
Further information from Helen Green, +44 (0)20 7612 6459, h.green@ioe.ac.uk.
The Teaching and Learning Research Programme, based at the Institute of Education (IOE), ran from 2003 until 2008. This project, Adult Learning in the Workplace: Creating formal provision with impact, investigated the impact of publicly funded courses in literacy, numeracy, computing and English as a second language over a number of years. The project was led by Professor Karen Evans (Institute of Education) and Professor Alison Wolf (King's College, London).
Britain has long had a significant minority of its adult population with poor basic skills, so in 2001, the government launched Skills for Life, a national strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy skills. A key feature of Skills for Life is an emphasis on work-based learning, with literacy and numeracy courses funded by the government by delivered by independent learning providers in the workplace.
Both statistical and non-statistical techniques were used, with 575 participants in literacy programmes being tracked for up to three years, in 50 workplaces across four economic sectors. Information on the backgrounds of the participants, their prior educational qualifications, attitudes to skills for life courses and attendance on any subsequent courses, was gathered via structured interviews. Test data was collected at the beginning of the course, and roughly one and two years after completion to determine if any literacy gains were sustained.
Dr Andrew Jenkins is a research fellow in the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning at the Institute of Education, London.
The Institute of Education is a college of the University of London, specialising in teaching, research and consultancy in education and related areas of social science and professional practice. The Institute conducts over one-third of the educational research in the UK and last year's Research Assessment Exercise judged that 35 per cent of the work it had submitted was "world leading", while much of the remainder was of international significance.