Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
The Quality of Programmes and Policies
regarding
Literacy and Skills Development
a study commissioned for the 2005 EFA Monitoring Report
by
John Oxenham
May 2004
2
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
The Quality of Programmes and Policies regarding Literacy and
Skills Development
“ABLE (Adult Basic Learning and Education) in the South continues to be
trapped between overly ambitious expectations and meagre attention and
resources. Adult literacy is expected to produce miracles among the poor --selfesteem, empowerment, citizenship-building, community organization, labor
skills, income generation, and even poverty alleviation. … While pedagogical,
and specifically methodological, issues are important, … one must not forget
that poverty is not the result of illiteracy but very much the contrary. The most
effective way to deal with poverty is dealing with the structural economic and
political factors that generate it and reproduce it at national and global scale.”
Torres, 2003.141
Introductory Remarks:
The fourth goal of “Education For All” (EFA), “Achieve a 50 per cent improvement in
levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and
continuing education for all adults”, contains two elements, literacy and continuing
education. Both require their use in this paper to be clarified.
As regards ‘literacy’, the quote above from Torres (2003) emphasizes a point long
pressed by UNESCO and others: ‘literacy’ encompasses more than the basic skills of
reading, writing and calculating. It can and does involve learning and education for
combinations of: personal satisfaction, healthier family life, more productive
livelihoods, accessing credit, establishing and managing a business, stronger support
for educating children, deeper understanding of local, national and even international
conditions, stronger participation in civic affairs and social development, capacities to
require accountability from public services, knowledge of rights and how to insist on
them. Without at least some of these elements, the basic skills serve no purpose and
experience has amply demonstrated that they do not serve as ends in themselves,
particularly for poor adults. Further, without at least some scope for putting the skills
to work usefully --in the eyes of the user-- the skills will wither1. That is why Torres
emphasizes ‘structural’ factors, social, economic, political, that influence whether and
how people can use their skills.
A ‘reverse’ confirmation comes from the observations of ‘multiple literacies’: where
people really need reading, writing and especially calculating for their daily
operations, they may create forms of their own. While these forms may have only
very local, even individual, application, they do underline the ‘applied’ nature of the
skills.
In this light, the discussion here will use ‘literacy’ as an abbreviation for programmes
of adult education and training that combine reading, writing and calculating as
central components with equally important components concerned with family, social,
economic or political life.
The second element of the fourth EFA goal, ‘Continuing education’, simply connotes
opportunities for adults -older and younger, female and male- to learn new knowledge
1
For several examples of such situations in one country, see Karlekar (2000) chapters 2 through 7.
3
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
and develop new skills for the betterment of themselves, their families and localities.
It connects with the third EFA goal, “Ensure that the learning needs of young people and
adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programs”.
The term ‘life skills’ includes the skills that people may need to deal with a variety of
problems and situations, or to maintain their rights, health, employability in waged
occupations or their productivity in varieties of self- or family employment.
As indicated earlier, literacy programmes can embrace many concerns. Most respond
to widespread demand for literacy and usually find that applicants outnumber the
places available. However, many find retaining their learners problematic for reasons
to do with the relevance of the curriculum or interest of the instructional methods.
Planners would clearly find it helpful to have an assessment of which combination of
objectives, approaches and methods tend to be more effective in producing
programmes that generate positive long term outcomes.
Unfortunately, the field of literacy education has chronically lacked sound,
comprehensive and comparative data –particularly on impacts-- on which to establish
conclusions and inferences for good organisational strategies and teaching methods.
What this paper can offer then is simply a distillation of experiences that have been
documented to some degree and appear to have been effective in enabling at least
some unschooled people to apply the skills of literacy, life and livelihood to
enhancing the their lives and living standards (see e.g. Torres (2003) pp. 57-60;
CONFINTEA V.2004).
The paper looks first at what has been learned from literacy programmes during the
past 40 or so years. Then it discusses lessons from programmes more exclusively
focused on developing vocational and technical skills. Thereafter it examines the
linkages between education and training in literacy and training for other skills, and
measures that will support improving quality in education for all. In the final section,
the paper considers the elements of national policy that lifelong learning for all would
require.
Experience and lessons in literacy
There was early recognition of the importance of a strong and wide base in the skills
of reading, writing and calculation to a society that aimed to democratise its polity, as
well as to industrialise its economy, raise the productivity of its primary products
through adopting new practices and technologies, and improve the living standards of
all its people. Strategies to accelerate the development of that base among unschooled
adult populations have had to take into account assumptions about the nature of
literacy skills and what learners would do with them.
General approaches
Until the 1950s, the skills were widely assumed to be general -- reading a manual was
no different from reading a newspaper-- so that any effective text and curriculum
would serve all learners equally well. This basis, “one size fits all”, underlay the
efforts that governments and other agencies used, whether in campaigns2, national
programmes or missionary classes. Until the later 1960s, both used standard texts and
2
See Arnove and Graff (1987) for evaluative accounts of several campaigns.
4
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
methods for teaching, and both used forms of social mobilisation to recruit illiterate
people into classes and literate people as volunteer or modestly rewarded instructors.
Political and other interests vested in those operations, reinforced by deficient
capacities and methodologies in monitoring and evaluation, make assessing their
relative effectiveness difficult. However, it is clear that each did have its success
stories, whatever the criteria used to gauge success. It is also clear that success was
not uniform: there were variations both between and within programmes that
indicated the influence of a number of factors to be considered later.
Functional Literacy
By the middle of the 1950s sufficient numbers of adult educators had sufficient
doubts about the efficacy of generalised efforts to prompt UNESCO to propose a new
strategy in the 1960s. The assumptions behind it were first that literacy skills are only
means to ends and therefore require clear purposes and almost immediate
applicability. Second, adults would respond better to content and methods that built
upon their existing knowledge, interests and abilities to discuss, than to the drilling
and repetition that characterised earlier programmes. Third, most learners could not
be expected to be able automatically to see how to transfer skills from a classroom
situation to ‘real life’, so that opportunities to apply the skills needed to be built into
the curriculum.
The approach was then to be ‘functional, selective, intensive and work-oriented’.
Instead of developing one curriculum to fit all interests, it developed many, each one
to fit a particular group of people with a particular occupation or function that
required literacy skills to raise its productivity. The occupations proposed ranged
across domestic, agricultural and industrial situations in both rural and urban areas
and addressed the interests of both women and men. A significant feature of the effort
was the attention and resources devoted to monitoring and evaluation. In 1976, the
UNDP and UNESCO jointly published a summary evaluation. Its generally modest
findings reduced confidence in the efficacy of literacy programmes in general.
Nevertheless, many governments and other agencies have persisted in their efforts to
ensure that people do have opportunities to realise their right to master literacy to a
degree adequate for their societies. While the concepts of ‘selective’ and ‘intensive’
approaches have faded, the idea of ‘functional’ literacy and the assumptions behind it
have been validated and characterise most contemporary literacy programmes. The
functional content has usually included rudimentary information on health, hygiene,
nutrition, child care, agriculture, animal husbandry, environmental concerns, savings,
credit and other topics judged to be important and useful for unschooled and poor
people, especially for poor women. These might be termed technical interests and are
characteristic of programmes supported by governments and external agencies.
Literacy for Empowerment
However, parallel with them, although on much smaller scales, has been work aimed
at using literacy to address more political functions. Whereas many of the earlier
campaigns and programmes had indeed included political content in various forms of
nation-building, the Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire, tried to use literacy to generate
political and social change from below. He developed a pedagogical strategy that
would bring people to reflect on their predicaments and their causes. Through that
5
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
process, the learners would begin to use literacy to articulate their concerns and
initiate political action to ameliorate their conditions. Although the pedagogical
strategy appealed to adult educators, as well as to government departments of adult
education, scope for using it for political ends was restricted, so that it was soon
‘domesticated’ for the more technical purposes of the ‘functional’ approach.
Since 1993, however, the international NGO, ActionAid, has taken Freire’s strategy a
step further. Where Freire derived conventional texts and exercises from words and
phrases of especial significance in local vocabularies, ActionAid has gradually
dispensed with all prepared materials. Instead, it uses the techniques of Participatory
Rural Appraisal to introduce the participants to ways of representing their own
neighbourhoods and practices in symbolic fashion -e.g. maps, calendars- and to
progress from there by way of reflections on their predicament to words and numbers.
Literacy is subordinated to the intent of ‘empowering’ the poor to take action to
improve their situations -indeed, learning sessions are expected to end with the
identification of specific ‘action points’. The strategy is called REFLECT
(Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques). Its
appeal is such that some 350 organisations in 60 or more countries have adopted and
adapted it to their particular circumstances (see “www.reflect-action.org.)
Partnerships
For most of the past 80 years, the strategies of national campaigns and programmes
have been the preserve of governments and public agencies. Although private and
voluntary organisations have operated in many countries, they have for the most part
worked on their own with little help from governments. Where cooperation was
sought, it tended to subordinate the interests of the private organisations to those of
the governments. In the late 1970s, however, India’s National Adult Education
Programme opened the doors to more equal modes of cooperation. More recently,
from the mid-1990s, the governments of Bangladesh and Senegal3 have initiated
forms of performance contracts with varieties of private organisations, to conduct
literacy programmes in particular localities. Some of these organisations have been
the local offices of international non-governmental bodies, but more have been local
organisations, some with capacities for national reach, others based in smaller
communities, both urban and rural. Many of these smaller community-based bodies
are non-profit, but several operate for profit. These initiatives have not displaced other
publicly and privately organised programmes, but have run in parallel.
One of the major advantages of such partnerships is that they allow a wider choice of
content, learning materials and methods, so that the varied interests of small groups
can be more easily accommodated than in a more standardised government
programme.
A second benefit is that the initiative encourages the formation and growth of civil
society and the private sector. In Senegal, the government strengthens the process by
training the contractors in all the steps necessary from putting together a proposal of
sufficient quality to earn a contract through to monitoring the actual health and
operations of the learning groups they contract to run.
3
See e.g. Nordtveit (2004) for an account of the strategy in Senegal.
6
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
These efforts at partnerships through performance contracts have certainly not been
problem-free in either Bangladesh or Senegal. Nevertheless, if they prove to be as
successful as they currently promise to be, such partnerships may develop into a
widely adopted strategy.
Multilingual contexts: It has long been recognised that people acquire literacy most
easily in their mother tongue. A second best option is acquiring it in a language with
which they are at least familiar. Many multilingual countries find that two or three
languages are familiar to most of the population. They have tended then to organise
literacy programmes in just some of the more widely spoken languages. Ghana for
example has delivered programmes in as many as 15 languages, while larger countries
like India or Nigeria offer even more. Multilingualism then has not been an
insuperable problem, even if it has added to the complexity and cost of a programme.
Where an international language is more important than any of the indigenous ones in
terms of being the medium of government, education, law and commerce, tuition in
both the language and its literacy has been offered as a follow-on to the basic literacy
course. Namibia provides a recent example.
Adequacy of scale
Literacy programmes of one sort or another operate in all countries. Whether they are
on a scale sufficient to increase rates of adult literacy 50 per cent above the current
levels by 2015 is a question that can be answered only country by country. Some
countries are indeed mobilizing domestic and international support for substantial
literacy programmes that lead into long term continuing education. Nevertheless, the
overall impression is that in the majority of countries, overt acknowledgement of the
need for literacy and continuing education programmes is unlikely to translate into the
resources necessary for implementing them rapidly enough to attain the goal.
Outcomes
This section attempts to summarise what has been learned from the last few decades
of literacy programmes.
Mastering Reading, Writing and Calculating: The available studies suggest that, by
and large up to 80 per cent of the people, who enrol in well run literacy classes,
complete their courses and that half or more of the enrolees pass the local assessment
tests. This leaves open the probability that the other half of ‘unsuccessful’ completers
and premature dropouts may also learn and use some of the skills. It also leaves open
the probability that this other half will also experience some of the other effects -discussed below-- that may enable them to contribute to some of the Millennium
Development Goals.
The available studies also suggest that groups formed for particular purposes, who
take up literacy because it will help them to further those purposes, may be more
successful in retaining their learners and completing their courses (see e.g. Nirantar,
1997, Oxenham et al. 2002).
In terms of the bare skills of reading, writing, counting and calculating, the average
adult totally unschooled and illiterate learner, who manages to complete some 200400 hours of structured learning, seems to master skills equivalent to those acquired
7
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
by primary school pupils who have completed between two and four years of their
primary school course.
Some notes need to qualify the preceding sentence. First, the phrase “totally
unschooled and illiterate” is necessary, because in several countries large proportions,
even majorities, of learners are people who have had some primary schooling, but
who feel that they have not learned enough (see e.g. Indonesia Ministry of Education
and Culture, 1998, and Okech et al. 2001.19).
Second, the figure of 200-400 hours of structured learning is only an approximation
(see Oxenham et al. 2002.38). More hours of learning and practice would be better,
but may well be beyond the capacities of poor adults to manage.
Third, the phrase “between two and four years of their primary school course” is an
approximation, based on observations in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Uganda. There,
as indeed elsewhere, the effectiveness of primary schools differs widely between
localities. At the risk of over-simplification, we can rephrase these findings thus:
illiterate adults seem to be able to attain a degree of literacy skill in roughly 400 hours
that primary school children attain in 1,700 to 3,400 hours of primary school
instruction4.
While this might sound creditable, that level of mastery is probably insufficient to
support fluent reading and writing, much less to sustain independent development.
The corollary is that, without opportunities for continued practice and learning, much
of the attainment is likely to fall into disuse over a period of years5.
The final note is that levels of mastery seem to be independent of modes of
organisation, pedagogical methods and instructional materials. On the one hand, all
approaches and methods claim to be effective and offer evidence in support. On the
other hand, no studies have been found that systematically compare the efficacy of
different methods and materials. The inferences seem to be that human beings can and
do learn effectively under a variety of conditions and that current methods are more or
less equally effective. Such an observation does not preclude the possibilities that
better understanding of how the adult human brain learns will lead to the development
of more effective pedagogical approaches (see e.g. Ardila et al. 2000).
Using Reading, Writing and Calculation: The evidence on whether people who
master literacy actually make much use of it is mixed. At one end are the relatively
reserved observations of Karlekar (2000) and her fellow authors in India and Fiedrich
(2003) on REFLECT projects in Bangladesh and Uganda. At the other end are the
relatively positive observations of Okech (2001) and his team on other projects in
Uganda. The answer may lie in the observations of Carron (1989) and Carr-Hill
(1991) in their evaluations of literacy programmes in Kenya and Tanzania: literacy
4
The risks of over-simplification lie in the fact that literacy is only one component of the primary
school curriculum and in possibilities that pupils do not receive the full official amount of instruction
due to their own or their teachers’ absences.
5
However, Kapoor & Roy, 1970, Indonesia Ministry of Education and Culture, 1998, Cawthera.2003,
Okech et al. 2001, and other studies suggest that the rate of forgetting the skills may be slower than
feared earlier.
8
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
seemed to be more used, where economic development was more in evidence. This
supports the observation of Torres above about the importance of structural factors, as
well as the principle of selectivity that UNESCO advanced in the 1960s. It suggests
that people will use their literacy skills wherever conditions make it useful or
desirable for them to do so.
Contributing to the Millennium Development Goals
The discussion now turns to whether literacy programmes contribute to achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Four aspects important to these goals are
considered here: effects on productivity and income (MDG-1), effects on enrolling and
supporting children in school (MDG-2), ‘empowerment’ in women (MDG-3), and
effects on family health, hygiene and nutrition (MDG-4, 5 & 6). Additionally, the
current emphases on democratisation, decentralisation and accountability make it
pertinent to look at possible effects on social and political participation.
Reducing Poverty and Hunger (MDG-1)
The reduction of extreme poverty and hunger is the very first of the eight Millennium
Development Goals. Do literacy programmes help this reduction?
The first point is that overwhelming majorities of enrolees come from the poorer
sections of a society. They may not include many of the absolute poorest, but they do
include the very poor and some of the poorest. That is to say, literacy programmes are
self-targeting on the very people who should benefit from poverty reduction.
As regards rates of return on investment, the World Bank undertook studies in Indonesia,
Ghana and Bangladesh (World Bank.1986.16, 1999.11, 2001.49). The Indonesian
study estimated an individual rate of return to investment of about 25 per cent; the
Ghanaian study estimated a private rate of return of 43 per cent for females, and 24 per
cent for males, along with a social rate of return of 18 per cent for females and 14 per
cent for males; while the Bangladeshi study reckoned that the average private rate of
return might be as high as 37 per cent. However uncertain these estimates, they suggest
first that the investments are productive and, second, that what poor people learn from
literacy programmes does help them move out of poverty.
Other studies come from 8 countries. Only Burchfield’s (2002-A and B) studies in
Bolivia and Nepal and World Education’s (2001) in Nepal, had baseline data. All,
relying on reports from the beneficiary learners rather than on strictly measured
observations, tend to be positive. Four examples will be useful. Managers of
SODEFITEX6 in Senegal reported a six per cent increase in productivity among cotton
farmers, who had taken the corporation’s literacy course (Oxenham et al. 2002.24 seq.).
The Women’s Empowerment Program in Nepal rapidly enrolled some 130,000 women
and organized savings, credit and investment schemes to the tune of US$1,600,000 in a
little over two years (Ashe & Parrott.2001). Cawthera felt able to conclude on the basis
of successive visits to literacy groups in Bangladesh over three years that the
participants had experienced a sustained and beneficial impact on livelihoods, a
lasting impact on agricultural practices and on nutrition, and a sustained increase in
savings and investment. (Cawthera.2003.14-15) Similarly, in their evaluation of three
REFLECT projects in Bangladesh, El Salvador and Uganda, Archer and Cottingham
6
Society for the Development of Textile Fibres, Senegal.
9
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
(1996.63 seq.) were able to furnish examples from all three countries of how the
educational process had stimulated participants to improve their uses of land, water,
crops and money.
Quite apart from productivity in its normal sense is the effect that some mastery of
written calculation engenders. Successful participants say that they can now handle
money, especially paper money, more confidently. More important, they feel less
vulnerable to being cheated in monetary transactions, since they can now record them.
This is a key gain for people who are by necessity micro-entrepreneurs, for it helps them
to manage their businesses on a sounder basis7.
In sum, the evidence available suggests that literacy programmes can indeed help with
poverty reduction --although that is not to argue that they constitute a sufficient
condition, let alone a panacea.
Contributing to Universal Primary Completion (MDG-2)
Do literacy programmes contribute to achieving universal primary completion? Studies
from at least seven countries have looked at the question. Despite some inconsistencies,
the balance of probability lies fairly strongly on the side of stimulating effects on school
enrolments, perseverance and completion. Women who have taken literacy courses do
tend to be somewhat more likely to enrol and keep their children in school.
Even stronger effects are found where forms of ‘Family Literacy’ are used to enable
parents, especially mothers, to take a more supportive interest in their children’s
schooling. Examples come from Turkey and South Africa (see Bekman, 1998;
Desmond, 2004). The benefits for both children and mothers are strong and durable
(see e.g. Brooks et al. 1996, 1997, Basic Skills Agency. 1998)
An important inference from these findings would run as follows: “If parental literacy
greatly helps school attainment, then for effective pro-poor education we need effective
adult literacy activity…It could be that effective adult literacy has an important part to
play in making mainstream education both more effective and more pro-poor.”
(Cawthera, 2003).
Empowering Women (MDG-3)
Most literacy programmes tend to enrol many more women than men. As noted above,
these women are mostly poor. Does their participation in literacy courses help them take
stronger roles in their families and communities in improving the quality of life?
Moulton’s (1997) review suggests that they do tend to increase the confidence of
individual women and studies from ten countries provide some supporting data. For
example, Burchfield’s studies in Nepal and Bolivia, cross-sectional and longitudinal,
(1997, 2002) signal that participation in literacy programmes does tend to promote
participation in community groups more rapidly than other factors. On the other hand, it
does not assure such participation, since half and sometimes more of the learners do not
join community groups or take greater part in local affairs.
7
There is quite a lot of evidence that many unschooled people can do complex calculations mentally.
Nonetheless, gaining the ability to do and record them on paper engenders added confidence.
10
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
The tenor of studies of women’s empowerment from the other countries is much the
same (e.g. Nirantar.1997, Karlekar.2000): some women do seem to make worthwhile
gains in confidence, but the gains are by no means universal. Neither are they
negligible.
Family Hygiene, Nutrition and Health (MDG-4, 5 & 6)
Studies from seven countries suggest that at least some of the graduates of literacy
programmes do change habits that affect health. The most interesting study comes from
Nicaragua. It took place 10 years after the National Literacy Crusade of 1980. On
measures of rates of infant mortality and child malnutrition, the study observed, “Not
only was survival significantly higher among children of women in the adult education
group compared with those of illiterate women, but also, within the adult-education
group, survival was better for the children of women born after the CNA, rather than
before.” (Sandiford et al., 1995.15).
The sixth of the MDG is to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS. This makes Burchfield’s
findings particularly interesting. Participation in the literacy programme had a strong
effect on gains in information about preventing infection: the higher the participation, the
greater the gain in knowledge (Burchfield et al. 2002.60. Fig. 20).
Promoting Social and Political Participation
Current trends in decentralising government and public services, with the concomitant
emphasis on good governance, accountability and democratisation, call for stronger
participation in social and political affairs by larger proportions of the population.
Observations from seven countries suggest that participation in literacy programmes
does promote social participation, although with the usual variation: some participants
will be prompted more strongly than others, while some may not be prompted at all.
Grivel (1990, pg. 64), evaluating the outcomes of adult basic education in four provinces
of Burkina Faso, found many, but not all, of the newly literate undertaking roles in
almost all the economic and governing bodies of their villages. Similarly, the
SODEFITEX corporation in Senegal was pleased to find that the farmers --men and
women-- who had taken their literacy course, took up roles in managing the affairs and
accounts of the producers’ cooperatives, and also began to take control of the marketing
of their products (Oxenham et al.2002.27). In addition, many of them undertook to teach
literacy classes of their own.
In less favourable conditions, Archer and Cottingham (1996) squarely face the issue
of the influence of existing cultural norms on the effects of adult education. For their
study in Bangladesh, they warn that social change is gradual. Fiedrich (2003.176 seq.)
echoes this warning. Nonetheless, within that set of social constraints, the women’s
groups did become more active in pursuing their own programmes. In contrast, the
REFLECT programmes in El Salvador and Uganda yielded several instances of
community participation and collective action.
Within groups with different experiences of basic adult education, Comings et al. (1997.
17) found that women who had completed a 9-month course, in comparison with
neighbours who had completed only the first 6 months “are much more likely to be in a
mothers’ group, be a member of a committee, live near a Community Health Volunteer,
and speak Nepalese as either a first or daily language.” Here arises a suggestion of
reciprocally reinforcing ‘interaction effects’ between pre-existing aspirations and
11
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
educational experience. Similar reports come from the Women’s Empowerment
Program, also in Nepal (Ashe and Parrott.2001). In sum, suitably organized and
implemented literacy programmes do tend to engender stronger and more confident
social and political participation by poor, unschooled people -particularly poor women.
On the other hand, expectations for change should be realistic and evolutionary, not
revolutionary.
Summary of the possible contributions to the MDG
The available evidence suggests that appropriately implemented literacy programmes
can contribute through at least significant minorities of their participants to reducing
poverty, attaining universal primary completion, empowering women, increasing
health, impeding the spread of HIV/AIDS and enhancing social participation. On
these grounds, efforts to raise the quality and efficacy of literacy programmes would
appear to be warranted. On the other hand, such efforts should not raise expectations
of miraculously rapid transformations. Rather, literacy programmes need to be viewed
as a kind of yeast, which will help other investments be more productive, provided all
the necessary conditions --social, institutional, economic and infrastructural-- are
satisfied.
Before considering how to raise the quality of literacy programmes, the paper looks at
programmes to develop life and livelihood skills and then at the question of linkages
between literacy and other skills. After that, it resumes the challenge of quality.
Experience in skills development
Concern with developing ranges of skills useful in life and livelihoods for poor,
unschooled people has a long history. Quite apart from the extension advisory and
training services of government departments like agriculture, animal husbandry and
health, public and private services have offered programmes of education and training
in arts, crafts, trades, home economics, nutrition and child care.
Some skills programmes have been centre-based, with those catering for rural
communities affording residential facilities. Others have reached out to more remote
rural communities, either with post-harvest training camps or with mobile training
centres. However, despite the long-standing concern, actual provision by the state,
private and voluntary sectors has been modest, with relatively small numbers of
learners and very small percentages of public funds involved. Regrettably, too, no
assessments of their outcomes appear to be available. For the most part, poor
unschooled people have relied on patterns of informal learning within families and
communities, and traditional apprenticeships to acquire their skills (see e.g. Leach et
al. 2000 and Afenyadu et al. 2001).
Atchoarena (2004.10) suggests that the situation has not improved markedly in recent
times: “Although the (four) studies identified numerous initiatives taken by different
actors, both in the public and private sectors, to provide vocational skills training,
these programmes are often short in duration, with limited impact and sustainability.
In general they highlight the fact that the skills needs of the most disadvantaged
groups in society are more often overlooked.”
12
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
As regards skills for livelihoods, as distinct from life skills,8 one of the deficiencies of
earlier programmes was their exclusive focus on the technical skills of the crafts and
trades and their neglect of skills for business management. Over the years, a more
holistic view has been developing. For instance, experience with a 6-year project in
Honduras, has led to a proposal that envisages three components for skills training for
poor rural populations. It bases itself on the need to assess the potential and
opportunities of particular localities, taking into account the available infrastructure
and environment. One component is the educational, which comprises literacy and an
appropriate form of liberal education. The second component is the technical, which
covers training in production, organisation and management. The third component
uses the principle of ‘learning by doing’ to suggest undertaking social and productive
projects. Each component requires support from an appropriate institution -e.g. a
ministry each for education, labour, local government, or analogous nongovernmental agencies. The proposal clearly implies considerable capacities within
each of those institutions, as well as considerable coordination between them. The
proposal acknowledges this, as well as the complexity of the undertaking and the
probability that international assistance, both technical and financial will be required
(Ooijens et al. 2000.176).
A slightly later review of a number of experiences in several countries reaches similar
conclusions. After examining apparently successful work in combining skills
development with training in savings, credit and business management plus literacy
education, it suggests a strategy for diversity: “The livelihoods and sets of livelihoods
that the very poor undertake are notably diverse. So are the environments in which
they work. So, too, are the possibilities of enhancing those livelihoods and developing
new ones. Managing these diversities calls for flexibility, imagination and
resourcefulness, and for institutions that can respond appropriately.” (Oxenham et al.
2002.42). However desirable such a strategy may be, it would clearly entail
substantial efforts in capacity building and institutional development.
Tikly et al. (2003) introduce an additional challenge to institutional capacity in their
study of policies for skills development in Rwanda and Tanzania: it is the challenge of
globalisation. Even poor, rural farmers and other workers and their families will feel
the effects of shifts in world trading patterns and regulations and will need to respond
to them through adjusting their own skill sets. Tikly’s team identifies nine groups of
skills, three of them covering broadly life skills, the other six relating more to
livelihood skills in both the formal and informal sectors of employment (p. 88).
Although globalisation is still in its early evolution, its force underlines the need for
policies and institutions that are not content to continue indefinitely with standard sets
of staff and courses, but are instead alert for shifts in training needs and opportunities
and are organised to respond to them.
Linkages between Skills Development and Literacy
For several decades now, UNESCO, several governments and the adult education
profession have recognised the reciprocally reinforcing effects between life and
8
As indicated in the introductory section, life skills in general denote skills related to family and social
life, like problem solving, decision making, hygiene, nutrition, health, communication with public
services.
13
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
livelihood skills on the one hand and literacy skills on the other. The proposal of
Ooijens and his team above is one manifestation of the variety of efforts to mesh
literacy and livelihood programmes more effectively for poor people. Oxenham et al.
(2002) explicitly examined the possible linkages between skills development and
literacy education. Using a framework proposed by Rogers (1997), they divided the
programmes into two main groups, ‘literacy-led’ and ‘livelihood-led’. Subject to the
limitations of the data available and granting wide variation in outcomes, they reached
two conclusions.
First, ‘livelihood-led’ programmes seemed to stand a stronger chance of success than
those that started from literacy. Demand for literacy is likely to be more powerful, if
concurrent training in livelihood skills demonstrates clearly that literacy and numeracy
are indispensable to their full effectiveness.
Second, organisations more concerned with livelihoods and other aspects of
development seemed to be better at designing and delivering effective combinations
of livelihood and literacy than organisations more focused on education.
How to improve quality?
If the evidence warrants measures both to raise the quality of literacy programmes and
to link them more closely with life and livelihood skills, what would such measures
entail? In broad terms, they would [a] effect a shift of emphasis from a literacy-led to
an interest or skill-led thrust and [b] incorporate ‘life’ and ‘livelihood’ agencies as
regular members of literacy instruction teams, somewhat along the lines of Farmers’
Field Schools (see e.g. World Education. 2000, ASPBAE.2000f).
Within that broad strategy, the following factors require to be taken into account.
Instructors/Facilitators: The key to a successful learning group is an instructor or
facilitator, who can engage the learners to spend sufficient time on task to ensure their
mastery of the skills and knowledge in the curriculum. The ideal instructor would
combine all the following qualities: reliability, competence in subject matter, methods
and skills, rapport with the learners, and the ability to sustain interest and engagement.
However, there is an obvious difference between the usual literacy instructor and the
usual instructor in agriculture or a trade. Most people who are literate can be trained
to teach literacy effectively to others. Livelihood skills on the other hand tend to
require more specialised instructors. Indeed, one of the problems of literacy
programmes has been the inability of literacy instructors to impart ‘functional’ topics
in either life or livelihood skills beyond rudimentary levels. On the other hand,
instructors in life or livelihood skills can be trained to be good literacy instructors as
well.
It would seem then that the ideal arrangement would have a group of learners served
by at least a pair of instructors, each covering appropriate skills within a coordinated
curriculum. Ensuring the complete dovetailing and complementarity between the skill
sets would constitute a challenge. The practicability of such an arrangement would
vary with locality, with urban locations being more favoured and the more
inaccessible rural communities at risk of losing out. The implication once again is that
14
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
the institutions concerned with life, livelihood and literacy education would need to
highly flexible and resourceful.
The following paragraphs consider what it takes to create and support a corps of ideal
instructors.
--Educational qualifications: for literacy instruction as such, instructors need only to
be competently literate -a specific level of schooling is unnecessary. Rather more
important are the abilities to communicate with, support and encourage learners to
persevere. For life and livelihood skills, instructors will naturally need to be
competent at least in the skills and trained to connect them with the literacy content.
--Local recruitment: over the years, adult educators have come to agree that learning
groups, who select their own instructors from among their friends, tend to run more
satisfactorily. While workable for literacy instructors, the approach would probably
need to be more flexible for technical instructors.
--Schoolteachers: it has sometimes been held that schoolteachers make ineffective
literacy facilitators for adults. Evidence from several countries contradicts this view.
Indeed, in some countries schoolteachers have been the mainstay of programmes for
isolated rural communities.
--Age: as with educational qualifications, age does not appear to be a crucial factor for
instructors.
--Gender: some cultures prefer or even insist that instructors should be of the same
gender as their learners. In most countries, many more men than women are available
to act as instructors, so that, where acceptable, it makes sense to organise ‘mixed’
classes.
--Remuneration: many programmes have relied on volunteers to teach literacy groups
and have succeeded in the short term. However, the current trend towards continuing
and lifelong education requires that instructors, both literacy and technical, need to be
paid, but not necessarily as permanent employees.
--Training: Good practice suggests that recurrent training in brief sessions supports
instructors better than initial training followed by irregular supervision.
Teaching Methods and Materials: Earlier observations suggest that, so long as
instructors succeed in helping their learners make progress towards their learning
goals, methods and materials are of secondary importance.
That said, it would obviously be sensible to make sure that the technical materials
support what the learners wish to learn and are in advance of what the learners know
already. That implies thorough needs assessments, developing content for a
comprehensive range of life and livelihood skills and producing high quality
materials. The pioneering 1970s example of Indonesia’s ‘Paket A’, may provide a
starting point: it offered 100 booklets on several topics, graded by reading difficulty
from beginners to more fluent readers (see e.g. Indonesia Ministry of Education and
Culture, 1998).
Support Structures: Most instructors do need support at the least in the form of
adequate supplies of instructional materials, and in the reliability of whatever
remuneration has been agreed. Moral support from community leaders can be
helpful, particularly in sustaining the courage of faltering learners. But it can also be
erratic. Cadres of official supervisors have been found to be generally ineffectual,
largely because of problems of transport, travel and inadequate budgets. The best
15
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
form of support may be a combination of moral encouragement from local leaders and
relatively frequent peer exchanges.
Assessment and Certification: Most programmes arrange for their learners to receive
some form of certification of their attainments as a means of sustaining motivation
and perseverance. Some recognise the basic literacy course as equivalent to some
level of primary schooling, which qualifies learners to enter more formal kinds of
education.
In this connection, it can be helpful, if certification through a literacy programme is
tied in with a national system of vocational qualifications. Despite the complicated
nature of specifying the details of such certification and despite the likelihood that
only a minority of adult learners will avail themselves of the opportunity, the
existence of such a system will provide a reinforcement of motivation for the more
ambitious and energetic learners.
Overall Approach and Strategy: The probability that combinations of life, livelihood
and literacy skills offer the best option for very poor adults, especially women,
suggests that the strategy proposed by Ooijens and his team (2000) is on the right
track for raising quality and effectiveness. Coupling that with the earlier observation
that groups, who use literacy to further their initial purposes, may be more successful,
suggests that the strategy should encourage differentiated approaches for three broad
categories of potential beneficiaries:
 groups that already exist and have their own purposes
 people who are not formally grouped, but who have clear interests in common
 participants training in skills that require literacy for their optimal utilization.
These three categories are likely to account for a majority of beneficiaries. In
addition, however, there may need to be provision for two more categories. The first
should attract the closest attention, for it includes the most impoverished and
marginalized people, who face the most intractable obstacles in their efforts to
improve their lives and livelihoods. While they may well present the most difficult
challenge in terms of framing and mounting appropriate courses and longer term
supports, they are at the heart of MDG.1, for they are the people whose income is
likely to be less than one dollar a day.
The second category could attract lesser priority. It includes potential beneficiaries,
who are not affiliated to any particular group, nor interested in any particular training,
but who would nevertheless like to learn how to read, write and calculate more
efficiently for purposes of their own.
Part of the general strategy to heighten effectiveness concerns the length of course
that poor people can be expected to manage. Completion rates suggest that the
average poor and rural learner is willing and able to complete a course that lasts
between 18 and 24 months. The strategy should then encourage course designs that
enable average learners to master sufficient skills within a maximum of two years
either to satisfy their particular goals or to earn a recognized qualification.
16
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
Connected with this is the issue of dropout. Most adults who abandon courses appear
to do so either during the first phase of a course or during the break between the first
and second phases. The strategy should then pursue course designs that establish their
relevance and usefulness in the very first stages of instruction, so as to maximize
engagement, regular attendance and retention.
Taken together, the foregoing points should provide a basis for programmes that will
combine life, livelihood and literacy skills with greater quality and more effectively
for poor people. Two issues require addressing, however. The first is cost: would such
a strategy prove inordinately expensive in relation to the other priorities of education
for all? The second is time: would a strategy that required such a degree of local focus
and capacity building, also require so much time as to render the deadline of 2015
infeasible?
As regards cost, the experiences of programmes in Senegal and Bangladesh indicate
that it is possible to help large numbers of local groups develop the capacities to
manage sets of literacy classes relatively successfully at an annual cost per enrolled
learner of approximately $50.00 at West African levels of costs and approximately
$20.00 at South Asian levels of costs (Oxenham forthcoming). These unit costs range
between 30 and 70 per cent of the annual unit costs of primary schooling in the two
countries and are clearly not inordinate.
As regards time, the experience of the Women’s Empowerment Program in Nepal is
instructive: in just two years, a partnership of NGOs reached some 130,000 women,
enabled them to accumulate some US$1.6 million in capital, undertake social action
on women’s rights and raise their literacy rate from 28 to nearly 80 per cent (Ashe &
Parrott. 2001). It thus effected very rapidly a combination of literacy, life and
livelihood skills on a scale that was large for the area it covered. If NGOs can
accomplish such a scale in such a short space, a determined partnership of
government and private efforts should be able to accomplish the equivalent across an
entire country. Equally instructive, if less dramatic, are the achievements of the
governments of Namibia and Senegal, both with substantial international support. The
first has run a successful country-wide literacy programme that leads into
opportunities for continuing education (see Lind 1996), while the second multiplied
the number of its partner NGOs fivefold in the space of just five years in what was a
pilot project (Nordtveit, 2004). These examples support the view that the goal for
raising levels of adult literacy by 50 per cent by 2015 is realistic, given sufficient will
and resources to achieve it.
National Policies for Adult Education and Lifelong Learning
The available documentation suggests that policies for promoting adult literacy and
continuing education can be successful in virtually any policy environment that
consistently favours adult education in both word and resources. Some current
thinking favours partnerships between governments and civil societies, partly to
accelerate and maximize the spread of literacy and other skills and partly to serve
other social and organisational objectives. However, governments and their political
parties have been substantially effective on their own and over long periods of time,
and the same is true of numerous private organisations that have operated with little or
no governmental support. Nonetheless, partnerships do offer the possibility of a larger
diversity of curricula and approaches to accommodate the diversity of interests and
17
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
learning styles that exist among disparate groups of people. Thus they also offer
possibilities of better quality and greater effectiveness in achieving the goals of
education and lifelong learning.
Tikly et al. (2003.125) remind their readers that the concept of ‘lifelong learning’ was
advocated 30 years ago by Julius Nyerere and is currently central to the development
of policies for education and training. What has bedevilled implementation is the
competition for resources. Wagner (2003.10) points out, “5 per cent of educational
budgets are spent on the 25-75 per cent of the populations in need of increased
literacy skills.” These same populations are also in need of better life and livelihood
skills. National policies acknowledge their existence and their needs, but most
governments chronically fail to allocate significant resources to them. This is not
surprising, given the inability of many governments to allocate sufficient resources to
their schools and universities and the possibility that many of them might well fail to
achieve the targets of the Millennium Development and Education For All Goals. In
this light, the approach of the government of Namibia to the issue of resources is
worth examining.
In the ‘National Policy on Adult Learning’ that it promulgated in 2003, the
government stated that one of the purposes of the policy was to maximise the
resources available for adult learning (Namibia.2003.31). After pointing out that the
government itself served varieties of adult learning through the work of no fewer than
32 directorates in 18 ministries, it established an Adult Learning Council that would
be financed primarily out of public funds, but would also administer an ‘Adult
Learning Promotion Fund’ that would receive grants and donations to finance
initiatives and research in adult learning. In this way, the government opened fresh
possibilities of expanding the resources that public agencies, non-governmental
organisations, community-based organisations and international donors were already
devoting to adult learning.
Implicit in that provision is an acceptance that, in the light of the scarcity of resources,
a government should neither monopolise provision for adult learning, nor leave it
entirely to voluntary and other private bodies. Instead, it should adopt the
simultaneous roles of executing its own programmes, enabling other organisations to
deliver learning programmes and catalysing experiment and innovation (see e.g.
Tikler et al. 2003.125 on Rwanda and Tanzania). The model of ‘faire faire’ in
Senegal --now being adapted by several other states in Africa-- offers one approach to
managing this triple role with transparency and accountability (see Nordtveit.2004 for
a full account).
Accepting the triple role permits a government on the one hand to set an overarching
framework, such as a National Qualifications Scheme9, within which other agencies
can set their own targets, and on the other hand to delegate to a variety of
organisations the challenge of focusing “more than ever on which kinds and what
levels of literacy are required for each society, as well as for specific groups within
that society” (Wagner.2003.57) The Namibian national policy explicitly recognises
the need for such delegation: “The curriculum will be decentralised, so that although
9
It is important to stress that the framework should accommodate people, who have not had the
opportunity of ordinary schooling, but who have nevertheless acquired useful skills.
18
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
the skills and competencies remain the same, the topics and content of materials will
be localised.” (p.22)
As has happened in Senegal, the process of combining delegation with improving
quality requires simultaneous processes of capacity building and institutional
development at every level. Norms of transparency and accountability are established
and gradually strengthened, while competences in leadership, organisation,
management and pedagogy expand and take firmer root. In effect, both government
and civil society can grow more competent.
An additional but separate point should be stressed. These needs to build a range of
capacities at several levels, to provide reliable support structures and foster a high
standard of instruction and continuous learning predicate a deliberate and phased
strategy of expansion. This is an appropriate accompaniment to the recognition that
literacy courses, with or without skills development, are only beginnings and should
be conceived as the first phases in long term undertakings towards lifelong learning
for all.
Adult learning is what might be called a transversal concern. That is, it is not the field
solely of a ministry of education; all ministries and agencies that need to help adults
to learn something are involved. Ooijens’ proposal reflects this in its multi-party
approach to skills development for poor rural populations. Similarly, Namibia’s
policy acknowledges the need in the composition of the National Council on Adult
Learning: it draws its membership not only from the Ministry for Basic Education, but
also from the Prime Minister’s Directorate of Human Resource Development to
represent the whole spectrum of government, as well as from the wider public
concerned with adult learning. Whether the mechanism of the council will be
sufficient to bring about the kind of coordination and concerted action that Ooijens’
proposal requires between government ministries and between government and other
agencies remains to be seen. What is important here is that national policy
acknowledges the necessity of such a mechanism and addresses it.
19
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
References
Afenyadu, Dela, K. King, S. McGrath, H. Oketch, C. Rogerson, K. Visser. 2001.
Learning to Compete: Education, Training & Enterprise in Ghana, Kenya & South
Africa. Education Research Serial No. 42. London. DFID (Department for
International Development)
Archer, D.; Cottingham, S., 1996, Action Research Report on REFLECT. London:
Overseas Development Administration (Department for International Development)
Ardila, Alfredo, Feggy Ostrosky-Solis, Victor U. Mendoza. 2000. Learning to Read is
much More than Learning to Read: A Neuropsychologically Based Reading Program.
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society (2000). 6. 789-801
Arnove, R.F. & H.J. Graff, eds., 1987. National Literacy Campaigns: Historical and
Comparative Perspectives, New York, Plenum Press
Ashe, Jeffrey and Lisa Parrott. 2001. PACT’s Women’s Empowerment Program in
Nepal: a group-based literacy and savings-led approach to micro-finance: Part 1:
Introduction to WEP, Implications for the field, the Case for Bridge Funding.
Washington D.C., USAID (United States Agency for International Development)
ASPBAE, 2000[a], Simo, Joel.Critical Literacy and Awareness: Melanesia.
2000[b], Shrestha, Chij. From Literacy to Health: Nepal.
2000[c], Cruz, Antonia Y.. Functional Literacy, Heart of Empowerment:
Philippines.
2000[d], Rahman, Ehsanur. Ganokendra: An Innovative Intervention for
Lifelong
Learning
and
Community
Development:
Bangladesh.
2000[e], Monga, Nivedita. Knowing Her Rights: India.
2000[f], Daluwatte,Mallikani and Sujatha Wijetilleke. Reading the Living
Environment: Sri Lanka.,
2000[g], Attiq Ur Rahman, Shaheen. Taking Control: Women Emerge from
Poverty: Pakistan.
2000[h], Rogers, Alan. Beyond Literacy: Some General Thoughts.
Beyond Literacy: Case Studies from Asia and the South Pacific. Mumbai,
ASPBAE (Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education) and Bangkok,
UNESCO/PROAP (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization/Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific).
Atchoarena, D. 2004. Refocussing on skills development. Paris. International Institute
for Educational Planning. IIEP Newsletter Vol. XXII, no. 1. 10-11
Basic Skills Agency. 1998. Family Numeracy Adds Up. London. The Basic Skills
Agency and National Foundation for Educational Research
Bekman, S., 1998, A Fair chance: An Evaluation of the Mother-child Program,
Istanbul. Mother Child Foundation, Yapim Matbaasi
20
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
Brooks, G., T. Gorman, J. Harman, D. Hutchison, A. Wilkin. 1996. Family Literacy
Works. London. The Basic Skills Agency and National Foundation for Educational
Research
----. 1997. Family Literacy Lasts. London. The Basic Skills Agency and National
Foundation for Educational Research
Burchfield, Shirley, Haiyan Hua, Tania Suxo Iturry, Valeria Rocha, 2002-A, A
Longitudinal Study of the Effect of Integrated Literacy and Basic Education Programs
on the Participation of Women in Social and Economic Development in Bolivia,
Boston, Mass. World Education, Washington D.C., The United States Agency for
International Development Office of Women in Development
Burchfield, Shirley, Haiyan Hua, Dyuti Baral, Valeria Rocha, 2002-B, A Longitudinal
Study of the Effect of Integrated Literacy and Basic Education Programs on the
Participation of Women in Social and Economic Development in Nepal, Boston,
Mass. World Education, Washington D.C., The United States Agency for
International Development Office of Women in Development
Carr-Hill, Roy A., Aikael N. Kweka, Mary Rusimbi, Rustical Chengelele. 1991. The
Functioning and Effects of the Tanzanian Literacy Programme. IIEP Research Report
No. 93. Paris. International Institute for Educational Planning
Carron, Gabriel, Kilemi Mwiria, Gabriel Righa. 1989. The Functioning and Effects of
the Kenya Literacy Programme. Paris. IIEP Research Report No. 76, International
Institute for Educational Planning
Cawthera, A., 2003, Nijera Shikhi and Adult Literacy: Impact on Learners after Five
Years, published on the World Wide Web at “http://www.eldis.org/fulltext/nijerashikhi.pdf”
Comings, J.P., C. Smith, S. LeVine, A.J.Dowd, B.Garner, 1997, A comparison of
impact from schooling and participation in an adult literacy program among women
in Nepal, Cambridge, Mass. National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and
Literacy (mimeo draft)
CONFINTEA V.2004. Synthesis Report: Recommitting to Adult Education and
Learning. Adult Education and Development Vol. 61, 2004
Desmond, S. 2004. Family Literacy Project in ‘Adult Education and Development’
Vol.61.35-40
Fiedrich, M.; Jellema, A. 2003. LITERACY, GENDER AND SOCIAL AGENCY:
ADVENTURES IN EMPOWERMENT. London. Department for International
Development (DFID), Educational paper no. 53
Grivel, E., 1990, Rapport de l’Evaluation des Effets de l’Alphabétisation sur les
Alphabétisés au Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, Institut National d’Alphabétisation
Indonesia Ministry of Education and Culture, 1998, Impact Evaluation of Non Formal
Education Program in Batch I and II Intensive Kecamatan, Final Report, Jakarta.
21
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
Directorate General of Out-of-School Education, Youth and Sports, Directorate of
Community Education
Kapoor, J.M. & P. Roy. 1970. Retention of literacy. New Delhi. Council for Social
Development, India International Centre
Karlekar, Malavika (ed.), 2000, Reading the Wor[L]d: Understanding the Literacy
Campaigns in India, Mumbai, Asian Pacific Bureau of Adult Education
Leach, Fiona, S. Abdulla, H. Appleton, J. el-Bushra, N. Cardenas, K. Kebede, V.
Lewis, and S. Sitaram. 2000. The Impact of Training on Women’s Micro-Enterprise.
Development Education Research Serial No. 40. London. DFID (Department for
International Development)
Lind, Agneta. 1996. “Free to Speak Up” Overall Evaluation of the National Literacy
Programme in Namibia. Windhoek. Ministry of Basic Education and Culture
Directorate of Adult Basic Education
Moulton, J., 1997, Formal and Nonformal Education and Empowered Behavior,
Washington, D.C., Academy for Educational Development
Namibia. 2003. National Policy on Adult Learning. Windhoek. Ministry of Basic
Education, Sport and Culture
Nirantar. 1997,. “Innovating for change: Women’s Education for Empowerment. An
Analysis of the Mahila Samakhya Program in Banda district (India).” in Mauch, W.
and U. Papen (eds). 1997. Making a difference: Innovations in Adult Education. pp.
33-47. Hamburg. UNESCO Institute for Education and German Foundation for
International Development. Frankfurt am Main. Peter Lang, GmbH
Nordtveit, Bjorn Harald. 2004. P A R T N E R S H I P T H R O U G H O U T S O U R C I N G :
The Case of Non-formal Literacy Education in Senegal. Washington D.C. The World
Bank Africa Region Human Development Working Paper Series (forthcoming)
Okech, Anthony, Roy Carr-Hill, Anne R. Katahoire, Teresa Kakooza, Alice N.
Ndidde, John Oxenham. 2001. Adult Literacy Programs in Uganda. Washington
D.C., Africa Region Human Development Series. The World Bank
Ooijens, J., M. Espinoza Vergara, A. Tampa. 2000. Education for work in poor rural
areas: a viable strategy of non-formal education. Turin. International Training
Centre/ International Labour Organization & Utrecht. University of Utrecht Institute
of Cultural Anthropology
Oxenham, John, Abdoul Hamid Diallo, Anne Ruhweza Katahoire, Anna PetkovaMwangi, Oumar Sall, 2002, Skills and Literacy Training for Better Livelihoods: A
Review of Approaches and Experiences, Washington D.C., World Bank Africa
Region Human Development Series
22
Quality in Literacy & Skills Development
Oxenham, J. (forthcoming) A Review of World Bank and World Experiences in
Supporting Non-Formal Education with Literacy for Adults (NFEA). Washington
D.C. The World Bank Human Development Network Education Department
Rogers, Alan. 1997. Women, literacy, income generation. Reading. Education for
Development
Sandiford, P., J. Cassel, M. Montenegro, G. Sanchez, 1995, The impact of women’s
literacy on child health and its interaction with access to health services, Population
Studies 49, No. 1, March
Tikly, L., J. Lowe, M. Crossley, H. Dachi, R. Garrett and B. Mukabaranga, 2003,
Globalisation and Skills for Development in Rwanda and Tanzania, London,
Department for International Development: Educational Papers 51
Torres, R-M. 2003. Lifelong Learning: A New Momentum and a New Opportunity for
Adult Basic Learning and Education (ABLE) in the South. Stockholm. Sida.
Department for Democracy and Social Development and Bonn. Adult Education and
Development, Supplement to vol. 60, 2003
Wagner, Daniel A., Robert Kozma, 2003, New Technologies for Literacy and Adult
Education: A global Perspective, Philadelphia, International Literacy Institute
World Bank.1986. Indonesia Project Performance Audit Report. First Nonformal
Education Project, June 30, 1986. Report No. 6304. Operations Evaluation
Department, Washington DC
____ .1999. Republic of Ghana, National Functional Literacy Program, Project
Appraisal Document, May 18, 1999. Report No. 18997-GH. Washington DC
____. 2001 Bangladesh Non-Formal Education Project. Project Status Report for
June 4-June 25, 2001, dated August 21, 2001. Washington D.C.
World Education. 2000[a]. Farmer Field Schools in Nepal: a proven model to
promote sustainable agriculture. World Education. Boston Mass.
----. 2000[b]. Women’s Economic Empowerment and Literacy Project (WEEL),
Nepal: Final Narrative Report - Year 3. Boston Mass.
----. 2001[a]. Women’s Economic Empowerment and Literacy (WEEL) - Nepal, First
Interim Narrative Report for the Period February 1, 2000, through January
31, 2001. Boston Mass.