Ms Inez Bailey:

They made me aware of that prior to my arrival at today's meeting. They said they met Deputy Brendan Ryan at the championships, made him wear a wig and took a photograph of it. Ms Olive Phelan, along with other former literacy students who have now become advocates, does great work trying to explain this issue. There is a counterintuitive piece about the school system. It is not to say that schools are not improving and we have fewer people with severe literacy and numeracy difficulties coming out of schools. However, there is, apparently, some difficulty with the holding on to the attainment level of schools sometime later when people are tested. I go back to my example of the Irish language. We are not saying should we change how we teach Irish. This is about recognising what we can get out of schooling. It is important that everybody going through the education system would be aware of the vulnerabilities of some of the things they are learning, particularly in later life. Evidence suggests that if one is not working in certain places, one is particularly at a disadvantage if not using those skills. In an employment situation where one is doing the same job for 30 years, it might not make much of a difference. However, in employment where people have to go through an information technology revolution and changing jobs, they are having to deploy different levels of skills and competencies all of the time. This seems to be underpinned by the need to keep one's skills up to a certain level all the time.

We suggest that this kind of message needs to go out to people about the importance of continuing to read, knowing how to write and compose letters, even writing online, as well as keeping one's numeracy skills up but in a real-life context. These are the different messages. Whether more can be done, there is no research going on about these disconnects. We have made a submission to the literacy and numeracy strategy for children and young people, which is being reviewed. In it we suggested there is a need to make an explicit link between that strategy and the adult literacy strategy. The review has said that this is possible. However, it needs to think through what further needs to be done in that area.

There is no research. The educational research centres themselves have said this challenging. I presume that gives some indication that they think further research needs to be done.