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Skills for Life (SfL) are essential skills that can help families during their school, work and leisure time. They include functional English, Maths and ICT. The Government aims to increase the number of people developing these skills to 2.25 million by 2010, with the ultimate ambition of 95% of adults achieving functional literacy and numeracy skills by 2020.

Family Learning Festival events are an ideal vehicle for embedding Skills for Life activities, as they are non-threatening, relaxed and fun! Research indicates that helping children with homework is a great motivator to get parents back into learning. So if you are trying to get adults to sign up for your course open it up by holding a Family Learning taster session to get reluctant parents through the doors.

Key points to remember when organising an event that involves Skills for Life activities are:

Targeting audience

  • Be aware that different types of learners will need to be treated differently. Some adults feel that learning just isn’t for them. Whilst others may be keen but feel their skills aren’t quite up to scratch.

Activities

  • SfL activities can be enjoyed by everyone
    Healthy living – working out calories used up for different activities
    Halloween – using shapes to create a picture
    Cookery – weighing, measuring, writing and reading to create a family cookbook

  • Do make it fun – one Family Learning Festival winner produced a newspaper to develop literacy and ICT skills.

Promotion

  • Don’t make it obvious that the activity involves English, Maths or ICT – this may put some people off

  • Don’t promote the activity as basic skills – some people may not feel they need additional help

  • When producing written materials remember:
    - Keep sentences short and organise them in brief paragraphs
    - Speak directly to the reader (e.g. use ‘you’ and ‘your’)
    - Don’t use font smaller than 12point and spread text out
    - Avoid using fancy fonts as they are often difficult to follow. Try Arial, Century Schoolbook, Plantin, Helvetica or Comic Sans
    - Repeating appropriate words can be helpful so don’ try to paraphrase
    - You may want to use a readability test

Follow up

  • If you have an evaluation form get staff/ volunteers to go round asking questions rather than handing them out.

  • Ask a SfL tutor or support person from your local FE college or Local Authority Adult Learning Service to advise adults that need support.

  • Do signpost further help such as the Get On number 0800 66 0800 however don’t single people out

Longer term SfL

  • If you are organising a longer term course make sure that you highlight the fact that it will include SfL as participants may see it as being dishonest if they are not made aware of the content.

  • Think about motivators that may help different audience learn – ‘helping kids with homework’; ‘getting a pay rise’ or ‘help manager your finances’

Activity ideas

Around the World

Shopping Around

BMI for adult family members 

Financially Fit Lunch for families

Online Fitness

SfL activities used for Learning at Work Day that can be adapted to use in a family setting:

Gardening activity

Shadow Puppets

Shape Game

Holiday activity

How to make a budget plan

Organising your work's summer party

Links

Get on

Move on

Bookstart Rhymetime

My Money Online

BBC - skillswise

BBC - RAW

Organising your event

Skills for Life Planning Guide

Get On campaign toolkit

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Contact the team

The Campaign for Learning Team are on hand to answer your questions.
T: 020 7766 0001
E: flf@cflearning.org.uk
See all contacts

© Campaign for Learning 2009. The Family Learning Festival is a not-for-profit campaign, organised by the Campaign for Learning, a national charity working towards social inclusion through learning. To find out more about our work visit our main site www.campaign-for-learning.org.uk

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