ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the impact that poor basic skills have on the identities and life course transitions of young people. It draws on data from three projects undertaken in England over a 20-year period from the 1990s. This is a period in which the parameters of young people’s lives changed significantly but a notable percentage of them continued to experience basic skills problems, despite policies attempting to address this issue (DfES 2003). Claims that a quarter of young adults in England experience difficulties (Moser 1999; BSA 2000) have been made, with higher figures (between 33 and 50 per cent) in areas of multiple disadvantages (DfES 2003). Recent surveys suggest up to 20 per cent of young people in England leave school with serious weaknesses in literacy and numeracy (Jama and Dugdale 2012; OECD 2013). Save the Children (2014) reveal how those from disadvantaged backgrounds are over-represented amongst those with poor basic skills. England features near the bottom of OECD (2014) league tables for literacy. But in this context, there has been a long-standing neglect of basic skills by social science researchers (Aldridge and Lavender 2003) with most studies examining skills only as a relatively peripheral part of wider processes of youth transition (Furlong et al. 2003). Longitudinal surveys document the relationships between poor skills and subsequent marginal careers, with poor literacy and numeracy making young people statistically more vulnerable to unemployment, poor quality work and social exclusion (Parsons and Bynner 2007). These surveys, however, while illustrating the statistical correlations between skills and certain life events, offer fewer insights into the ‘lived experiences’ of those with poor skills. We were keen to explore how poor skills may influence the development of particular practices, coping strategies and youth identities that in turn can help us understand the processes by which poor skills influence the life chances of young people. Below we provide a summary of the contribution our research has made via its focus on basic skills and transitions (see Cieslik and Simpson, 2006, 2009; Simpson and Cieslik, 2007). We also note how the research has provided a lens through which we have been able to contribute to related debates concerning social class, subjectivity and identity formation (Cieslik and Simpson, 2015).
