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Audit of adult basic skills activity in Sure Start programmes
Project Status: Completed
February - May 2002
This project's main aim is to strengthen families and communities and to reduce the number of workless families.
We already know that improving parents' literacy skills does enhance the performance of children in schools and increase the likelihood of parents finding employment. We aim to investigate basic skills activities that exist in the Sure Start programmes. This will be achieved by researching the 194 Sure Start programmes via a semi-structured interview schedule for use in telephone interviews with Sure Start regional managers and some program managers. These interviews are aimed to establish the basic skills activities, which are currently operating in each region. A report pro-forma will also be devised to gather case studies of good practice and learner perspectives. To motivate parents to contribute to the evaluation approximately ten focus groups beginning from March will be conducted on the Sure Start premises during observation visits.
In all our contacts with Sure Start projects we will aim to educate and inform staff about the Skills for life national strategy. At the same time we will identify practice and comment on the quality. We will define the quality of the provision we visit against the national standards set by the LSC and the common inspection framework. Through the observation visits and interviews with local staff and focus groups we will be able to record the local arrangements for identifying, supporting and referring parents and staff with basic skills needs. Finally we will identify the range of need as well as the range of provision and set this firmly within the context of the training needs analysis already underway.
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