Ruth: Interestingly, I was also a consultant to Lord Moser's group and I was
quite disappointed when I found that the Skill for Life Strategy had gone
well beyond helping the most in need much as in the US our government has
pushed for raising ABE goals beyond getting a high school equivalency to
preparing adults for college. In both the UK and the US, this looks like a
shift upwards in serving adults with better skills than what was addressed
in both A Nation at Risk and the Moser report.

I looked at the thrity year trend data for the last thrity years and the
only thing I could find in the data that seemed to consistently make a
difference in increasing student's skills in reading was parent's education
level. This lead me to suggest the importance of the intergenerational
transfer from parents to their children and the importance of education of
high school students and adult literacy students regarding this
intergenerational transfer phenomenon as an alternative to our contemporary
birth to death, lifelong learning philosophies and strategies for increasing
achievement in the basic skills of the workforce and the population in
general.

The UK has implemented some interesting programs of parenting in secondary
and adult education, but has not focused on the Multple Life
Cycleseducation philosophy and policies that might flow from this
philosophy. Nor has the US. If you want more information about the Multiple
Life Cycles ideas google my name with Multple Life Cycles in the search line
and you can find some reports.

Tom Sticht