Social and economic benefits of improved adult literacy: Towards a better understanding Robyn Hartley Jackie Horne

Acknowledgements

We also thank the following members of the Australian Council for Adult Literacy strategy group for their professional input, support and guidance at all stages of the project:

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  Professor Rosie Wickert, Director, Academic Policy and Projects, University of Technology Sydney
  
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  Pauline O’Maley, Coordinator, Community Reintegration Program, Salvation Army, Melbourne
  
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  Jim Thompson, Manager, Education Development Unit, Challenger TAFE, Western Australia.
  

Key messages

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  The most comprehensive relevant frameworks on costs and benefits relate to adult learning rather than literacy per se. They point to the importance of taking into account factors such as age and gender; collective as well as individual benefits; the ‘sustaining’ benefits of learning that enable people to continue or improve what they do in their communities; and the more recognisable ‘transforming’ benefits, such as increased employability.
  
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  Longitudinal cohort studies will be an important source of data for measuring benefits and costs, and in particular for demonstrating the sustaining and transforming nature of improving literacy and numeracy skills. Given the high costs associated with longitudinal studies, the feasibility of ‘buying in’ to existing studies should be explored as an immediate short-term option in Australia.
  
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  A mixture of quantitative and qualitative methodologies and the inclusion of individual, family and community impacts are likely to produce the most convincing evidence and understanding of costs of poor literacy and benefits of improved literacy.