Since we launched our skills for life strategy in 2001, we have enabled 2.8 million people to achieve nationally recognised qualifications. Our strategy is changing lives and helping people to find, stay and progress in work, increase their earnings, help their children and play a more active role in their communities.
I very much welcome that response, and I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new position. Does he agree that there are some real signs of improvement in our colleges due to the Government’s early action? Job losses, however, remain part of the landscape. Will he encourage more people to take up the courses so that, if they happen to lose their jobs, they will be in a much better place from which to apply for new ones?
I thank my hon. Friend for her welcome, although she slightly inflated my status. It is important that we commit to going further and try to be ambitious about our targets and ambitions for literacy and numeracy; that is why we recently refreshed our skills for life strategy in relation to those skills. It is also important to remember that the skills impact not only on the adult who acquires them, but on that adult’s family. The ability to read a story to the children and help them with their sums and homework is really important. It is essential that we change the culture around such issues in our country—particularly in respect of numeracy, which has not been given the importance that it should have been in relation to literacy. We have a lot more to do, but good progress has been made so far.
Should not numeracy and literacy be taught first in the home? We should encourage families to eat together, speak together and learn children the language and social skills that they need, rather than leaving that to public sector funding. We need to resolve the problem of broken families.
We do, although we should teach the children rather than “learn” them, as the hon. Lady said. Seriously, though, she is right that such skills must start in the home. That is why it is so important that those basic skills should be taught to adults who have not acquired them. We are trying to address the issue from both ends, through, first, improving literacy and numeracy delivery in schools. That has been going on for the past 12 years. Remember that children who started school in 1997 are now young adults coming through the system. We are also trying to make up for the decades of neglect of literacy and numeracy. We could blame Macmillan, Harold Wilson or anyone we like, but the legacy needs to be dealt with. That is what we are trying to do. The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We must try to think family as we try to enable the skills to be taught from an early age.