European Social Fund in England

Flexible basic skills programme

The objective of the project is to offer a flexible basic skills programme, providing employed beneficiaries with individually tailored learning support to increase their basic skills development and further learning.

The project has targeted 185 individuals from SMEs who would not ally partake in lifelong learning. It is anticipated that 40 beneficiaries will achieve a City & Guilds Entry Level 3 Certificate in Adult Numeracy & Literacy, of which it is envisaged that 51 will also progress to achieve a City & Guilds Level 1 in Adult Numeracy & Literacy.

Also embedded into the programme are the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) qualifications allowing individuals to achieve either the Foundation Certificate in Food Hygiene or Health & Safety.

The project will run until November 2004, there have already been some significant successes:

• Two individuals have progressed onto an Introductory Management Programme
• Three individuals have requested the Advanced CIEH programme
• One individual has gone onto an NVQ 2 programme
• One individual has opened his own restaurant and implemented the knowledge he gained on the programme
• Many individuals as a result of the programme have been promoted because of the skills they developed on the programme

Khalikur Raham and Rofi Chowdhury are working towards achieving the City & Guilds Adult Literacy & Numeracy qualification together with the Food Hygiene certificate. Khalikar and Rofi work at the Dhaka Tandoori Restaurant in Waltham Forest, where Khalikur is the headwaiter and Rofi is a kitchen assistant/waiter. Neither has been engaged in learning until now. The flexibility of the project has allowed them to study at their workplace on Sunday afternoon, when the restaurant is closed.

Other individuals benefiting from this programme include:

Kamal Miah, who also works at the Dhaka Tandoori Restaurant signed up for the ESF funded Food Hygiene course. Kamal was initially assessed at an entry ESOL level, seen as a strong barrier to learning. However, this was overcome with a combination of contextualised learning of essential skills in conjunction with food hygiene. After 3 months, Kamal felt ready to sit the written test paper and scored 80%, the highest in his group.

Nuru Vyas was working as a care assistant in a nursing home. She had not studied health & safety before. She lacked confidence in her ability to read text in English. She recently achieved her Health & Safety Certificate and she will now work to improve her written English in order to prepare for the City & Guilds in Literacy.

Josef Bhumin found the language barrier as an obstacle. The programme helped to boost his confidence in spoken English. Whilst working in a restaurant, he has spent a great deal of time studying the different elements of food hygiene and health & safety, for which he has achieved his Foundation Certificate. He is soon to open his own restaurant.