Rose, Judith Margaret; (2024) From A Right to Read to Access for All: understanding the relationship between adult literacy education and education for people with learning difficulties in England 1970–2010. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This study explores the relationship between adult literacy education and education for people with general (non-specific) learning difficulties in England between 1970 and 2010. I use documentary sources, archival research and personal accounts to understand an unexamined history. The thesis evaluates events which shaped the relationship and investigates the changing thinking behind practice and policy. I base my analysis on a divide between ‘rights’- and ‘needs’-based philosophies. I conclude that a rights-based approach to adult literacy education offers all students (disabled or not) the freedom to take some control and to challenge preconceptions. I utilise primary and secondary sources to confirm that people with learning difficulties were attending adult literacy education by the end of the 1970s. Conflicting approaches to the purpose of adult literacy education and the identity of students produced tensions throughout the period. For the people involved questions of ‘rights’ versus ‘needs’ were not well-defined, but the language used reveals contrasting narratives. A commitment to ‘rights’, empowerment and social justice motivated the campaign for adult literacy education in the 1970s. This spirit lived on in practice in a student-centred approach which was stressed by my interviewees. The agenda of empowerment matched the aspirations of disability activists. Selfadvocacy through adult literacy education could empower students with learning difficulties. The discourse of deficit, however, dominated public perception and government policy. It shifted the emphasis from social justice to individual deficit. The change in vocabulary from ‘literacy’ to ‘basic skills’ during the 1980s and 1990s was significant. Adult literacy education became an investment in up-skilling the workforce, funded through the vocational sector. A skills-based system focused on employability disadvantaged people with learning difficulties. The advisory report Freedom to Learn (2000) recommended a comprehensive approach to adult literacy education in England, rejecting the vocational imperative to enable people with learning difficulties to access the new Skills-for-Life programme. Government funding, however, prioritised economic ends. People with learning difficulties were largely relegated to ‘special’ programmes based on perceived ‘needs’.

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