ABSTRACT
In 1996 Tony Blair, MP, leader of the opposition Labour Party, declared that his three priorities for government would be “education, education, and education.”1 Early in its fi rst administration (1997-2001), the new Labour government instructed a working group under the chairmanship of Sir Claus Moser to investigate the state of adult basic skills in the United Kingdom and to suggest ways of reaching adults with literacy and numeracy needs. Lord Moser’s A Fresh Start: Improving Literacy and Numeracy (1999) concluded that up to seven million adults (one in fi ve of the adult population) in England had diffi culties with literacy and numeracy-a higher proportion than in any other Western country apart from Poland and Ireland.
