Basic Skills
	Educational disadvantage is a common factor in Artskills’ target group, with Liverpool schools performing significantly worse than the national average - excluded groups fairing worse still (OFSTED Report on Liverpool LEA, 1998). Artskills responds to local rates of low functional literacy & numeracy of twice the national average - and in the Pathways communities that we cover, worse still (very low / low numeracy & literacy). We recognise that most of the target group will not attend existing Basic Skills provision (for reasons including previous negative learning experiences; suspicion of, alienation and/or exclusion from mainstream education, etc.) and consequently suffer from this barrier to learning in future progression routes. Artskills, during more than four years of operation 1996-2000, has demonstrated that it can successfully engage with, and secure the trust of, the target groups that existing Adult Basic Education provision finds difficult to attract and retain.		Therefore, we continue to use this trust and the flexible working methods, that have been so successful in starting people off on the Basic and Key Skills process; working with partners who deliver existing provision (Further Education Colleges, Local Authority Adult Education Services, etc.) in order to overcome barriers to accessing this provision and achieving progression routes that have a good chance of sustainability and positive outcomes. Artskills does not seek to become a core deliverer of Adult Basic Education, but rather to work with excluded people who are not accessing current ABE provision, to provide a pathway to this provision, via developing new, flexible, motivating approaches to this area of learning, in collaboration with community, voluntary and mainstream public partners.