Armed Forces Basic Skills Longitudinal Study

As Phase one of the report into the Armed Forces Basic Skills Longitudinal Study is launched Martin Rose, NIACE Assistant Director (Army Project), gives an insight into NIACE's role in helping the Armed Forces improve Basic Skills.

A three-year Armed Forces Basic Skills Longitudinal study (AFLS) - sponsored by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills (DIUS) - examines the impact of improving literacy, language and numeracy (LLN) skills of Service personnel on their professional and personal development and collectively on organisational performance.

As the Army's strategic LLN partner, NIACE is managing the study with research support from the National Research and Development Centre for literacy and numeracy. The preparatory phase of the study has completed and its findings together with details of the future work were showcased as part of NIACE's Public Sector Workplace Seminar on 9th October 2008.

Army field briefing
Photo 1 Caption. Listen in! Daily briefings for soldiers demand effective note-taking and speaking and listening skills.

The Armed Forces have a longstanding commitment to the professional and personal development of their personnel. Sound literacy and numeracy skills are foundation skills that underpin the ability of Service men and women to assimilate training, to carry out their duties effectively and safely, and to take advantage of career opportunities.

The Services have recognised the importance of assisting those with basic skills needs - both for the individual and for Service operations. Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force have policies and systems of provision in place that are tailored to meet the scale of their particular basic skills needs.

With up to 50% of recruits joining the Army with literacy or numeracy skills at or below levels expected of a primary school leaver (compared with 5-8% for the Royal Navy and 8% for the RAF), the Army has by far the greatest challenge in ensuring its personnel have the basic skills necessary to undergo training and operate effectively as they progress through their Service career.

Navy graph plotting
Photo 2 caption. Accurate ship's navigation depends on sound numeracy skills.

This commitment to improving basic skills requires investment in time and resources. In making a case for continued investment in the face of other competing priorities, the three Services are keen to find out what is the quantifiable impact of improving basic skills. Armed with this, they should be even better placed to know where and how best to direct basic skills funding to achieve the biggest bang for the buck. Hard evidence to show the costs and related benefits of investing in workforce basic skills is patchy and/or not readily accessible - either across the Services, or indeed, nationally or internationally. The AFLS will provide a unique opportunity to gather such evidence.

RAF trainees come to terms with ICT.This Study will track the basic skills progress and achievement of up to 1600 Army recruits through their initial and specialist Army training and into their first appointments. Over the same period, in-depth case studies of basic skills learners across all three Services will be conducted with input from their commanding officers, line managers, military training staff and basic skills tutors. The study will assess the effectiveness of the basic skills training and the impact that basic skills improvements have had on individuals and their work.

learners in the RAF
Photo 3 caption. Listen, read, write and understand.

The preparatory Phase 1 of the AFLS has now completed. It reviewed the relevant Service, national and international research literature on the impact of basic skills improvements in relation to retention, trainability, social well-being, the role of organisational culture and the impact of embedding basic skills provision within vocational training. It also examined the Armed Forces' approach to addressing their basic skills challenges.

Short briefing papers summarising this work and an overview of the Study are available to download free below. The Study's annual survey of the Army recruit cohort will complete in Spring 2009, 2010 & 2011 with the case study research carried out throughout the study period. Interim findings will be made available each Summer with the final AFLS report expected to be published in June 2011.

In 2006 a strategic review of the Army's basic skills development since 2001 was conducted. The lessons learnt from that review are reported in Army Basic Skills Provision: whole organisational approach/lessons learnt (available as a free download from our bookshop)