There have been repeated attempts to establish mathematics qualifications for lower attaining students aged 16 years and over on vocational pathways in England. In 2004, the Tomlinson Report proposed Functional Mathematics and this paper examines the trajectory of this qualification (later Functional Skills mathematics) through analysis of policy…

Ideological struggles over the policy and practice of literacy education continue to characterise the field. This paper explores how 'new policy actors', market-orientated and profit-driven players, construct the crisis of literacy and schooling in Australia to reclaim the doxa of literacy education. The concept of doxa is employed to show how…

Context: The paper focuses on an analysis of school-based vocational education and training (VET) of adults in Slovakia against the background of the concept of second-chance education (hereafter SCE). The concept of SCE involves different conditions of education to those that adults faced during their initial education and were unable to meet.…

I argue that local adult literacy programming involves consciousness and praxis that obscures and renders invisible the social relations of race and ethnicity, and a key mechanism that enacts these processes in Canada are the Essential Skills Framework. Race and ethnicity, as social relations, have both a muted and active presence in the…

This article explores how responses to a generic skills framework are materialised in Irish schools, and the main aim is to shed light on multiple dimensions of policy enactment. The Key Skills Framework (KSF) was introduced as part of a curricular reform in Irish lower secondary schools -- a reform that has met substantial resistance locally and…

In Pakistan, adult literacy programs are offered to enable learners to function effectively to attain individual, family, and social sustainability, but these programs are continuously reporting low participation. This study aimed to explore the reasons behind low participation, employing a descriptive phenomenological design to examine the…

How far is the world away from ensuring that every child obtains the basic skills needed to be internationally competitive? And what would accomplishing this mean for world development? Based on the micro data of international and regional achievement tests, we map achievement onto a common (PISA) scale. We then estimate the share of children not…

This research aimed to examine the community stories of the Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe (EPALE) to understand and manage the de facto learning needs of adults in Europe and whether it has the functional capacity to be considered an innovative tool. The EPALE demands high-quality publication and provides users with six key…

Essential skills, including literacy and numeracy, are increasingly crucial for life and work, for business success, and for economic growth. However, the number of adults improving these skills in England has reduced by more than 60% over the past decade as Government investment in skills is set to be £1 billion less in 2025 compared to 2010. As…

Globally, the extensive damage caused by violent conflicts with subsequent social and economic costs have posed a real concern that needs to be urgently addressed. The provision of quality education is a force that can be utilized to curb constant conflicts within society. The purpose of the study was to establish the effect of the educational…

The aim of this study; The aim of this study is to determine the effect of applying the cooperative learning method together with structured materials in coding workshops on the basic skill levels of preschool students and to evaluate them together with the opinions of teachers and parents. A quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control…

According to the International Labor Organization, at least 160 million children ages 5 to 17 around the world were involved in some form of child labor at the beginning of 2020, including 79 million children performing hazardous labor. This article uses recent representative data from Bangladesh and Pakistan to investigate the relationship…

Targeted instruction is one of the most effective educational interventions in low- and middle-income countries, yet reported impacts vary by an order of magnitude. We study this variation by aggregating evidence from prior randomized trials across five contexts, and use the results to inform a new randomized trial. We find two factors explain…

Continuing to study mathematics is currently a requirement for low attaining 16- to 18-year olds in Further Education, as part of an ongoing drive to raise basic numeracy skills in England. However, these students, widely regarded as demotivated, often fail to make any progress in mathematics over the two years. This research explores how students…

The basic cognitive skill of numeracy is a recognized form of human capital, associated with economic and social well being for individuals and for nations. In this study, we explore how occupational complexity relates to proficiency in numeracy, among adults in full-time employment. We operationalize occupational complexity by constructing three…