Project Background

Despite many years of specific programmes addressed to different sub-sets of the low-skilled adults, there are still almost 70 million adults in Europe with only lower secondary level qualifications, approximately 20 million of whom have not even achieved this grade. Teaching basic skills to low skilled adults is probably one of the most difficult educational assignments in the field of adult education. Addressing the needs of the long-term unemployed; migrants; refugees; asylum seekers; and indigenous ethnic minorities like Roma demands considerable skill and dedication. And yet, anecdotally at least, educators working with these most marginalised groups tend to be the least well trained and least well resourced.

The OutsideIN project places its focus on marginalised adults and is seeking to develop in-service training and educational materials and resources to support adult educators address the needs of the most difficult to access adult groups in terms of lifelong learning.

The OutsideIN consortium is committed to addressing disadvantage, combating failure in education and enhancing didactic approaches in adult education. As a project team, we believe that it is essential to focus on the skills of educators and the resources available to them if any real or significant progress is to be made with the most marginalised adults.

Community learning festivals; eye-catching information campaigns; and new short bite-sized learning resources; are all elements that have been included in the comprehensive development programme delivered by OutsideIN.