Causes of Illiteracy and Poor Basic Skills

Surveys carried out between the 1970s and 1980s, allowed comparisons to be made between the groups of people studied. This pointed to a compounding of difficulties as people with poor basic skills get older. The greater labour market problems of the younger cohort in the late 1980s, meant that many more of them never experienced proper employment. The research described in the previous section shows this trend to be cyclical for those caught in it.

There is a vicious circle of disadvantage and marginalisation associated with basic skills problems which begins in early childhood. The child's family and the school attended get increasingly out of step.

The outcome of this is poor development of literacy and numeracy skills on the child's part which impedes further educational progress and is likely to lead in adult life, to a range of disadvantages including insecure employment and an early exit from the labour market. Further, the children of parents with basic skills difficulties tend then to go on to repeat this demoralising and debilitating episode.

As the global labour market changes, there will be an increasing need for people to update their skills, change the way they work and indeed change their occupation several times throughout their lives. This is set though, against a background where the number of jobs available is in decline.

Those with poor basic skills will be the least able to change and so will be more vulnerable to exclusion from employment and the wider society. This lack of social inclusion and cohesion has the worrying potential to lead to the disintegration of civil society across the European Union.

The Moser Report makes the case for a fresh start in England and Wales for basic skills education. The solution will lie in an education system that ensures every child gains the basic skills during primary education but also provides the support and education opportunities for all adults to develop and expand their literacy and numeracy skills.