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Family Learning Festival and Skills for Life
Supporting Skills for Life
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’s original aim was to increase the number of people developing these skills to 2.25 million by 2010. However, this target was met two years early. The ultimate ambition is to have 95% of adults achieving functional literacy and numeracy skills by 2020. By functional we mean up to Level 2 (the level of a GSCE grades A – C)). In a Family Learning context these skills may be referred to as LLN (literacy, language and numeracy).
The national Get On campaign promotes Skills for Life to individuals. It encourages people who would benefit from brushing up on these skills to enrol on a course. Most courses are free and are delivered through colleges, learning providers and Local Authorities.
For more information on the Government’s Skills for Life policy visit www.dius.gov.uk/skills/skills_for_life
Why are Skills for Life important?
Improving Skills for Life are linked to a range of benefits for both the individual and society. These include:
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increased self-confidence and confidence to support children’s learning
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improving people’s lives by reducing social exclusion
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breaking cycles of deprivation in families
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improving a person’s employability
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improving skills gaps in the labour market
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enabling adults in the workforce to become more flexible and adapt to changing technological and work environments
Skills for Life and Family Learning events
Informal and one-off events such as Family Learning Festival activities are ideal opportunities to support Skills for Life learning, because they aim to be non-threatening, relaxed and fun. Family learning activities that involve Skills for Life can give parents/carers confidence to help their children with their homework and can help motivate them to continue learning and improve their skills.
There are a number of ways in which you can use your Family Learning Festival event to support Skills for Life:
· By embedding Skills for Life in activities
· By signposting attendees to further help for Skills for Life
See how family learning has inspired and supported the development of Skills for Life.
Other Skills for Life pages:
Supporting Skills for Life
Embedding Skills for Life in activities
Signposting further help for Skills for Life
Skills for Life and Family Learning in Action
National Skills for Life support and initiatives
Start adding your events to the Family Learning Festival map
The Learning Revolution is here!
Find out how the Campaign for Learning is supporting this October's celebration of everything that's great about learning for its own sake and for personal, family and community development - and how you can get involved. Find out more
Campaign for Learning welcomes Ofsted report on family learning
Family learning, where children and parents engage together in learning sessions, leads to improved communication, confidence and interpersonal skills in children according to a recent Ofsted report. Children also settled in better in class and had improved relationships with teachers and other children following the sessions. The report found that family learning can also lead to qualifications and employment for parents and give them the confidence and skills to help their child. The Chief Inspector recommends that family learning should be promoted as a core school activity. Read the full report.
Time to brush up on essential skills?
The Family Learning Festival is an ideal opportunity to encourage families to brush up on their skills.The Campaign for Learning is working once again with Get On to help promote and support Skills for Life (maths and English) to families during the Festival. You can also find out more about supporting Skills for Life in our dedicated Skills for Life section, which includes all the latest updates on Skills for Life. Our themes section also has ready-to-run activities that embed Skills for Life and can be used for your Family Learning Festival events.
Updated planning guide
See our updated planning guide, which covers information and advice on planning your Family Learning Festival events
We need you!
As we're all aware, the economic conditions mean that everyone's budgets are stretched. So, we need your help to share ideas with new and existing organisers on how to get the most out of Family Learning Festival events. We'd like you to upload video clips about how to organise an event, your top tips or ideas for activities. If you have footage of event itself that's even better - please get permission from attendees before filming and uploading anything to a public arena.
Once you have your video upload it to www.youtube.com and tag it with "Family Learning Festival" and drop us a line to let us know at flf@cflearning.org.uk See what we already have on our channel youtube.com/familylearningtelly Need some help on making a video.
