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I’ve received the following correspondence via friends in the literacy and ESL fields. It’s from the Australian Council for ADult LIteracy (ACAL).

TAFE Qualifications
The Department of Education and Training made a recent decision, without warning or consultation with the field, to reduce the minimum qualification needed for teaching in TAFE from a graduate teaching qualification to a Cert IV. The Council is most concerned about this move which is only likely to undermine the quality of provision and exacerbate teacher shortage rather than easing it.   The Cert IV qualification can be obtained in a couple of weekends and focuses on training, assessment and reporting.  It does not even begin to address issues around learning, pedagogy or classroom management.
Whilst at present TAFE Institutes also require a professional qualification (such as a BEd) in addition, it is not unlikely that in future this may change as the central curriculum unit is removed by the TAFE restructure. This is likely to make teacher salary rates vulnerable, which will make the field even less attractive to new entrants. In the UK unqualified assistants are already being used because of the teacher shortage.
If there was a shortage of doctors, would the government respond by dropping the qualification to a FirstAid certificate? Obviously not! What is required is attractive salaries, career paths, working conditions, research, PD, and professional status to attract young educators into the field and rebuild the adult literacy/numeracy infrastructure.
It should be noted that this debate in no way diminishes the value and contribution of the large numbers of volunteers working in adult literacy.  Volunteer tutors bring a different and special approach to literacy provision; but a supposedly professional teacher with only a pseudo-qualification in training and assessment is surely the worst of both worlds.

So much for an “Education “Revolution”……
Adult literacy and numeracy has been ignored by the Rudd Government’s much-publicised education revolution.  With the usual focus on school literacy, adult literacy and numeracy issues have not figured on the Federal government agenda, despite powerful recent data from the international ALLS survey.
Both ACAL and the NSW council have written to minister Julia Gillard to raise adult literacy issues such as:
•    the need for a national adult literacy policy
•   the literacy/numeracy needs of people who are not jobseekers
•    the renewal of the ageing LN workforce
•   the massive issues around the LLNP program, its coercive nature and its reporting requirements
•   the dire implications for programs and provision if sustainable recurrent funding is removed and made contestible.
The response has been extremely disappointing to date. Council hopes that discussions with Senator Ursula Stephens at the upcoming ACAL forum in October may help to start a more productive dialogue with the government, and some real progress and development in the field.

When I started out in adult literacy in the early 90s you required not only a B.Ed but also post-grad quals in adult literacy. Now it seems you need no more than to sit through several days (of often tortuous) training in the most basic training techniques. We used to teach this stuff to adults wanting to run hobby courses. It’s pretty much a case of “well I can read and write so I can teach others to do it too”.

Having said that though the ELLN field certainly needs to evolve and embrace new methodologies. But what its all about is having an effective kitbag of tools and techniques to draw on to tackle some of the toughest teaching anyone will ever do.