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Background: Incentives have been proposed as a method to improve attendance in adult literacy classes. In the UK, several areas have piloted the use of incentives to promote attendance at adult literacy classes. To date no rigorous evaluation of this policy has been undertaken. This paper describes (as far as we are aware) the only UK-based randomised controlled trial to evaluate the use of financial incentives in order to promote attendance in classes for adult learners. Methods: We used a cluster-randomised design. Twenty-nine adult literacy classes were randomised in two groups using minimisation. Intervention group learners received £5 (US$10) for each class attended. The main outcome was class attendance; the secondary outcome was literacy scores. Results: After allocation, one class was found to be ineligible for the study. In the 28 remaining classes there was a statistically significant reduction of about 1.5 sessions (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.28, 2.79; p = 0.019) attended by the intervention group compared with control, after adjusting for cluster size and baseline scores. The difference in reading scores between the intervention and control group, conditioned on baseline scores, was -2.38 (with controls scoring higher than the intervention group), but this difference was not statistically significant (95% CI -7.40 to 2.57, p = 0.33). Conclusion: Payments to attend adult literacy classes had an adverse effect on attendance. This trial needs urgent replication, ideally with a larger incentive, before this approach is widely used by policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lifelong learning has been a key theme of New Labour's education policy agenda since 1997, but is a broad and often amorphous concept. This article analyses New Labour's ideological perspective in this context, outlines the main developments and difficulties, and evaluates the record over the seven years in office. New Labour's policy on lifelong learning can be divorced neither from its general education policy nor from its broader human capital approach to education, within an ideology of 'marketised welfarism'. The article discusses these characteristics and notes both the continuities and differences between New Labour and traditional Labourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the founding purposes and justification of natural science in the statutory school curriculum. It offers a critique of the strand of argument and the proposals for reform which have developed after the report Beyond 2000 focused on a particular usage of the term ‘scientific literacy’. Two lines of argument are criticised. These are, first, the view that a founding purpose of the science curriculum can be to prepare students for dealing as adults with socio-political issues with a scientific aspect, and, second, that there is a well-defined distinction to be drawn between the purposes of the statutory curriculum for pupils who will become professional scientists and others. The article suggests that these issues have not been the subject of sustained and open-minded examination in recent years, and calls for such an examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the importance of the development of a European dimension to the general education curricula in European countries. Role in consolidating the continent by a firm pan-European ideals of freedom and cooperation between European nations; Examination of the program's success; Problems encountered; Future prospects of a Eurocentric general education program in the continent.