Adult Literacy App and Teacher Handbook and Student Workbook for Public Testing and Feedback
For the latest information about our public testing and engagement activities please head over to our Testing + Feedback web page
What? – Citizen Literacy is an adult literacy education programme being developed by the Citizen Literacy Community Interest Company, a non-profit organisation based and registered in Scotland (SC671958). Our work is supported by the Ufi VocTech Trust, Nesta The Innovation Foundation, and the Department for Education. What we do is develop resources and services to support teachers help adults improve their reading and writing skills.
Why?– Imagine living in a world of written words you do not understand? That is the daily reality for many people in the UK, who can speak and understand English but cannot read or write the language. According to the government’s own figures over 1 in 6 of the working age populations have very low levels of literacy, this equates to about 6 million people. We think every adult should have the right to be able to learn to read and write, as a matter of social justice. You can find out more about our work and the ideas and values behind our approach in a ‘White Paper’ that we have written.
How? – Our contribution to tackling this problem is developing effective printed and digital learning resources and services to support teachers who are helping adults to improve their English reading and writing skills. We are developing a set of integrated digital / paper resources to support adult literacy teachers and their students that provides a progression pathway from beginner levels through to Level 1 (England). These are fairly unique in combining a highly structured and integrated blend of phonics, grammar, alphabet awareness and punctuation for adults just starting out in literacy learning. Our work is focussed on improving the literacy of adults who are already speakers of English. Feedback from colleagues who teach ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) has indicated that many of our tools and resources will be of use to them, especially for ESOL literacy learners.
Who? – The current Citizen Literacy programme partners are the Citizen Literacy CIC, City of Glasgow College (Faculty of Education and Humanities), Scottish Union Learn, Micro-phonics Ltd., ReachWill Ltd., Claire Collins Consultancy Ltd., and TRT etc Ltd.
When? – Right now, we are working on developing and releasing our first set of resources in September 2020 for comment and feedback from the adult literacy community in the UK and wider afield. You can find out more about our plans in our ‘White Paper’.
Citizen Literacy Community Interest Company – a non-profit organisation based and registered in Scotland (SC671958).