CERI Eye - Bi-annual conference of the Agence Nationale de Lutte Contre l’Illetrisme (ANLCI)

Janet Looney  reports from the bi-annual conference of the Agence Nationale de Lutte Contre l’Illetrisme (ANLCI)  in Lyon, France  on the 21st and 22nd of June.

The ANLCI have been our partners for the current What Works study on Improving Teaching, Learning and Assessment for Adult Language, Literacy and Numeracy learners.  The conference took place over three days and included several workshops and roundtables.  There were approximately 500 people at the conference – primarily practitioners and programme leaders from different regions of France.

We were given a Friday morning slot to present findings from the What Works case studies in France.  I gave a general introduction to the study.   Programme leaders from the three programmes featured in our study discussed innovations they had developed, and the OECD expert (Michel Benoît, a Swiss expert in this field) provided his own insights on what he had seen.  [The programmes featured in our study included a network of providers in Haute Normandie who had conducted an action research project specifically on formative assessment to improve teaching and learning; a prison-based programme in Lyon; and a programme for youth with low foundation skills in Marseilles.]

In addition to our own workshop, I attended workshops and roundtables on work-based foundation skill learning.  Presenters emphasised the importance of working closely with employers to identify the literacy needs of their employees, and to also convince them that investments in adult foundation learning would improve their production.