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Hello all I've been thinking about the request from Nerissa at Oldham College for info about the new Employability with Acentis course. Ten years ago Melanie Cooke and I wrote about ESOL and Employability in our book ESOL: A Critical Guide (OUP, 2008). We were developing an argument at the time that literacy acts as a gatekeeper in employment contexts as never before, and that the association between functional literacy and work is a complex one but is often treated rather simplistically. Here (below) is an edited flavour of what we wrote then. I don't intend in any way to disparage the Oldham College course - I understand very well why a FE college might be putting on such a programme. But I do have some genuine questions and hope to spark a bit of debate as we embark on a new academic year: * Is our critique (below) still valid ten years on, in relation to contemporary ESOL for Employability courses such as the Acentis course? * Is the opinion we set out back then widely held today or just a minority view? * What are the counter-arguments to what we wrote about ESOL for Employability courses, from the perspective of ESOL in 2018? * What has changed in the decade since Mel and I published our book? [From Cooke & Simpson 2008] Literacy and employability In educational policy literacy is often associated with employability, the ability and capability people have to gain employment. This requires an interpretation of literacy primarily as a basic skill (the conventional or 'common sense' definition), and relies on the questionable assumption that the economic value of the workforce can be increased through training in basic skills. ESOL students are often viewed in terms of how they can become more economically productive, and conversely are castigated for being a drain on the economy when they do not progress to a certain level. This corresponds with a broader discourse in education policy, which ties education to employability. Quotations from politicians and educational policy makers provide evidence of this way of thinking. Here are two, from a UK Government education minister, and the authors of a government-commissioned review of skills. I want a [Further Education] system ... which helps employers of all shapes and sizes achieve their business goals. (Denham 2007) Nowhere is the UK's skills deficit more apparent than in basic skills. Today, more than five million adults lack functional literacy, the level needed to get by in life and at work. (HM Treasury 2006: 61) The dominant perspective in policy is thus that: a. students in Further Education (which includes the majority of ESOL students in the UK) are there to service employers and their business needs; b. functional literacy is a skill that can be measured or quantified; c. if you do not have functional literacy, you, like five million others, cannot 'get by in life and at work'. There are a number of pedagogic and ideological reasons why the development of literacy skills with a focus on 'employability' adequately addresses neither literacy pedagogy nor the needs of those seeking employment. Functionality should not be, but frequently is, considered in isolation from individual circumstances, which is to say, people's particular reasons for learning. The complicating factor here is that these circumstances are just that-individual-and moreover, they change over time. This makes any attempt at pinning down the nature of the skills that constitute functional literacy very difficult to do. And even if the scope and nature of such skills are tightly defined in syllabuses, they may well not adequately cover students' broader literacy needs. The questions beg: Functional for what? Functional for whom? It may be the case that the answers are 'for employment' and 'for employers', and it is the case that for a good number of students the demands of work create their most urgent needs with regard to English language and literacy. For many workers, language training is an essential part of their socialization into a specific workplace or world of work. Doctors and nurses, for example, who are learning to do their job in an English-dominant country, need to follow very specific language training courses whose content relates closely to their needs in employment. On a general ESOL course they are not likely to encounter the language and literacy practices they need to perform specific activities in their jobs. For such students, it is appropriate to do a targeted English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course which may be provided at a college or in the workplace itself. Students who are already workers need a complex set of language and literacy competencies. These include the specific institutional and occupational discourses of their jobs. In addition, workers need the interactional competence to form relationships with their colleagues and negotiate their rights. In many ESOL contexts, employment-focused courses provide only the most generic, decontextualized focus on the skills of employability such as writing letters of application and CVs, and preparing for interviews. This is reflected in the growing number of ESOL courses and qualifications which concentrate on ESOL for work. These courses can be contentious amongst teachers, who are resistant to teaching them because of their narrow generic focus and because of the associated shift of responsibility for funding adult ESOL courses away from colleges and towards employers. One ESOL manager, interviewed about her college's new ESOL for work programmes, observed the following problem for many ESOL teachers in the new turn towards the generic workplace: We came into the public sector and we could all be earning more money if we were doing other things, but we had a belief in education, in colleges, in students or the politics of asylum or whatever it was, but this new agenda has nothing to do with that, it is all about being business focused, and we're not business focused people, that's why we're here. Criticisms levelled at some ESOL courses for their attention to instrumental needs and 'survival English' apply equally to ESOL for work qualifications and courses. English language students, whether jobseekers or not, should be exposed to as wide a range as possible of language, perhaps including the language of literature and storytelling, poetry and song, as well as the language skills needed in the workplace. Furthermore, not all ESOL students are actively looking for work, and some already have jobs which they are more than capable of performing. They therefore do not regard their ESOL course as essential to their increased efficiency as workers. Instead, many people are studying ESOL because they see an ability to communicate in English as a necessary and important aspect of living in an English-dominant country. These people can feel excluded (and in some cases are in fact excluded) from ESOL classes with a predominant focus on developing generic work-related language skills. You can read more in the book, in Chapter 6. In fact please buy the book, although it's very out-of-date - last year's royalty cheque was worse than pitiful. I'm also attaching a paper that covers the same ground, likewise dwelling on the question of the purpose of ESOL - a question which is good to be posing again now, in our times of change. The paper's Cooke, M. & J. Simpson (2009) Challenging agendas in ESOL: Skills, employability and social cohesion. Language Issues 20/1, 19-30. Cheers! James Dr James Simpson Senior Lecturer (Language Education) School of Education University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT T: +44 (0)113 34 34687 E: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> W: www.education.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff/academic/simpson<http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff/academic/simpson> From: ESOL-Research discussion forum and message board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Roberts, Nerissa Sent: 04 September 2018 15:19 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Employability with ESOL Hi everyone, Happy New Academic Year! We are starting a new qual this term, Employability with Acentis. We have never run this qual before and we are planning on delivering a 2 hour a week session leading to the certification. I would be most grateful if anyone has got any info, resources or hints and tips in advance! Thanks Kind Regards, Nerissa Roberts PL - ESOL Curriculum ________________________________________________________________________ [http://files.oldham.ac.uk/logowithtext.jpg]<www.oldham.ac.uk> Rochdale Road, Oldham OL9 6AA www.oldham.ac.uk Direct: 0161 785 4118 Email:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> [http://files.oldham.ac.uk/facebook.jpg]<https://www.facebook.com/oldhamcollege>[http://files.oldham.ac.uk/twitter.jpg]<http://twitter.com/OldhamCollege> ________________________________________________________________________ Do you need to print this email? Please consider the environment before Printing. This e-mail is only for the use of the addressee. It may contain information which is legally privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure. 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ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds. To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask]