1A: How to achieve success with learner achievement

The crucial element in ensuring that learners achieve success in literacy, numeracy and language skills is to establish an appropriate starting point for their learning. In order to do this, successful providers gather as much information as they can about the learners’ prior achievements from their previous placements. This is supplemented by a careful initial assessment of the learners’ strengths, needs and priorities on entry to the programme of learning within the context of their long-term aims. It is important to select the literacy, numeracy and language skills that will be needed by the learner and then to assess his or her level of competence in relation to these skills, rather than in relation to a random set of competences.

It is particularly important to identify at this early stage those learners whose cognitive impairments prevent them from developing reading and writing skills. If, for example, previous records indicate that the learner has made little progress in reading, writing and number, and he or she is unable to:

• recognise his or her name in writing
• copy letters of the alphabet and shapes such as a circle or square
• draw a recognisable human figure with a head, body, arms and legs
• match an object to a picture of the same object
• count objects by touching them and saying numbers as they do so
• recognise written numbers (1–9)

It is unlikely that he or she will make significant progress in reading, writing and number. In this case, priority needs to be given to the development of the learner’s speaking and listening skills.

Additional assessments are needed for those learners who have the potential to make progress. Good providers develop an initial assessment programme that comprises a number of everyday activities and that enables staff to identify what learners can do and what they still need to learn within the context of their long-term goals. They refer to the adult literacy and numeracy core curricula and the adult pre-entry curriculum framework for literacy and numeracy to identify the skills they need to assess. Wherever possible, the assessments are undertaken in ‘natural’ contexts. For example, it is possible to assess whether or not a learner can count reliably up to 10 (curriculum reference N1/E1) by asking him or her to count how many people want a cup of coffee; the number of plant pots on a shelf; the number of pages to be photocopied, and so on.

Some learners, particularly those with sensory impairments, speech and language impairments, impairments that affect their motor control and those who have specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia need additional assessments by appropriately qualified specialists. It is unlikely that many providers will have access to these specialist staff within their own organisations. Providers therefore need to make contact with appropriate organisations and make arrangements for such assessments to be carried out.

Once the initial assessment process is completed, the outcomes need to be recorded within a learner’s overall baseline profile. This then provides the starting point for each learner’s programme of learning and facilitates an assessment of ‘distance travelled’ to be made at a later stage. An example of a baseline assessment profile can be found under CIF Question 2 of this Guide.

This baseline assessment profile leads to the development of an individual learning plan (ILP) for each learner. The ILP comprises learning goals for literacy, numeracy and language alongside goals for other personal, social and subject-specific skills. The goals are clearly linked to the outcomes of the initial assessment process as described in each learner’s baseline profile and are set within the context of the learner’s long-term goals. An extract from a learner’s ILP showing his literacy, numeracy and language goals can be found under CIF Question 2 of this Guide.

All staff who come into contact with a learner have a copy of his or her ILP so that they can plan activities and set objectives for their sessions that will help the learner to achieve the learning goals set out in the ILP. In residential settings this includes staff who work with learners across the extended curriculum. Extracts from session plans identifying the literacy, numeracy and language objectives that teachers in different subjects have set to address the goals in the learners’ ILPs can be found under CIF Question 2 of this Guide.

At the end of the time specified for the achievement of the goals in the ILP, all staff who work with a learner assess his or her progress in relation to these goals and ascertain the ‘distance travelled’ by the learner against the starting point as described in the baseline profile. This information is then collated to provide a summative assessment of the learner’s progress. An example of a learner’s summative assessment, showing the progress made in literacy, numeracy and language can be found under CIF Question 2 of this Guide.

Where appropriate, successful providers enter learners for the national tests in literacy or numeracy and/or externally accredited, approved qualifications in literacy, numeracy and language. Careful records are kept of learners’ achievements in these awards so that providers can monitor trends in performance from year to year. These are then compared with the achievements for similar learners in comparable local and national organisations. Currently providers need to arrange such comparison exercises themselves as benchmarking data are not readily available.

A similar process is used to compare the achievements of learners who are not entered for the national tests or external qualifications. Providers establish networks of similar organisations and arrange moderation exercises to verify the progress that learners have made in relation to the literacy, numeracy and language goals in their ILPs. This enables providers to compare the achievements of their learners with those of similar learners within similar organisations.

Good providers also keep careful records of the placements to which learners progress. Providers make contact with these placements at agreed intervals to identify how useful the literacy, numeracy and language skills the learners have developed with the provider have been to them in this placement. This feedback is then used to inform the development of the provider’s literacy, numeracy and language programmes.