The simplicity is that the overall levels of adult basic skills in Birmingham are too low. This does not mean that the city is full of ‘illiterate’ and ‘innumerate’ adults. A recent survey of levels of skills puts the number of people who have such low skills levels as probably less than 2% or 3% of the adult population.

What the survey does demonstrate is that even when an adult is fairly competent at one level, this doesn’t mean that the person can do the whole range of lower level skills, nor that they are unable to do any higher level skills. It is a simple and convenient description to place people’s ability at a level (e.g. the adult curriculum standards where skills are described as being at Entry level, Level 1 or Level 2). The complexity behind this ‘shorthand’ is that adults skills profiles may well range across different levels for different skills i.e. the profile of their skills has a particular ‘spikiness’ across the categorisations.

The complexity lies in having a sufficiently varied set of approaches, via many organisations, to create vehicles for this varied set of needs.

The simplicity is that the numbers add up to an unacceptable picture where too many adults do not yet have the basic skills levels to get on rather than simply ‘getting by’ in a context that places ever higher technological, literate and numerate expectations on them.