[ Current issue ] [ Back issues ] [ Special Issues ]

Editor's Letter - October 2006

“We now live in a world in which it may be possible to think in more cosmopolitan and creative ways about our work”

NIACE’s Committee of Inquiry on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) publishes its final report this month. The independent committee, supported by NIACE and chaired by Derek Grover, points up the importance of ESOL provision, not only as a means to empowering adults to gain independence and control over their lives, but as a crucial dimension to a number of other key government policies, including community regeneration, combating racism and improving health and housing, as well as education and skills.

To be effective, the report argues, ESOL provision needs to be planned and delivered across the full range of relevant policies and activities, rather than considered separately in each of the relevant contexts. Furthermore, since ESOL goes wider than adult literacy, it needs to be viewed as a distinct element of wider policy, rather than as part of the Government’s Skills for Life programme. The report sets out a package of recommendations intended to make properly coordinated policies for ESOL possible.

The pattern of demand for ESOL has, of course, changed significantly over the past few years. Increasingly, the labour market is using migrant labour, and there are significant and growing demands for learning English from workers travelling to Britain from Eastern European countries. Darshan Sachdev looks at the changing pattern of demand and, in particular, at the barriers facing accession state migrants seeking to improve their competence in English as a means to getting a job.

The majority of migrants, Sachdev finds, are highly qualified and skilled, yet many fail to find jobs that match their experience and qualifications because of their poor English skills. Instead, they get caught in the trap of low-paid, low-skilled and temporary employment. Once in such employment, they have little time to find out about or to attend English language classes. Transport problems make it difficult for migrants living in rural areas to attend courses, while the transitory nature of much of their work means they often have to drop out of courses before completion.

Sachdev’s report also calls for a coordinated approach, across different agencies, placing ESOL in a wider policy context. Both reports form part of a broader debate about education for citizenship and social inclusion, a debate which is taking place against a backdrop of widespread resentment towards asylum seekers and migrants. Is there an opportunity here for adult education to reassert its historic links with big ideas like democracy, justice and equality, asks Ian Martin.

While some of us may have mixed feelings about globalisation, he writes, ‘it does mean that we now live in a world in which it may be possible to think in more cosmopolitan and creative ways about our work.’ Social purpose adult education ‘has always stood for purposeful educational intervention in the interests of social and political change’, but, increasingly, it is difficult even to talk about our work in these terms.

A cosmopolitan pedagogy, Martin suggests, could be ‘one way of re-engaging adult education in the wider democratic struggle which still insists that “another world is possible”’. At the very least, there is an opportunity here to revisit, and perhaps refresh, the traditions which attracted many of us to adult education in the first place. Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning

Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning