OFFICE OF FAIR
TRADING News Release (04/09) issued by COI News Distribution
Service. 16 January 2009
The OFT has today
published the evaluation report of its consumer education toolkit
'Skilled to Go'.
'Skilled to Go' was launched in June last year, and
aims to help adult learners develop consumer skills such as
writing a letter of complaint, buying goods such as a mobile
phone, and calculating discounts on products. The toolkit is free
to users, and is designed to increase the consumer confidence and
knowledge of learners.
The toolkit was trialed for a six week period, involving 135
adults attending literacy and numeracy courses in further
education colleges in London and Glasgow. Research showed that of
those participating in the programme:
* 64 per cent said they now felt very or quite confident in
knowing their consumer rights, compared to 20 per cent at the
beginning of the course,
* a doubling in the number of learners who felt very or quite
confident in being able to find out about their rights regarding
consumer issues, from 23 per cent to 52 per cent,
* when tested, learners demonstrated a 13 per cent increase in
consumer knowledge, for example where to find further help and
support, and also how to shop safely online, and
* the learners' ability to handle consumer scenarios rose by
up to 14 per cent. The research also found that 'Skilled to
Go' had particular appeal to groups of learners who were
traditionally hard to reach in an educational setting, such as
young men and those who generally require longer periods to
demonstrate progress in their skills such as language (ESOL) learners.
Almost half of further education colleges in the UK have now
signed up to use 'Skilled to Go' on the OFT website, and
the toolkit is now being used in secondary schools in Scotland.
Barney Wyld, OFT Director of Communications said :
'Consumer education is an important part of our work at the
OFT, and we know that skilled, confident and well-informed
consumers contribute to the OFT's wider remit of making
markets work well for consumers.
"Skilled to Go' is targeted at adult learners who can
benefit from developing the everyday consumer skills that some
people take for granted. Developing these skills is a long term
process but the pilot has shown how much progress learners made in
just six weeks. 'Skilled to Go' has proved to be an
effective tool in learning these important life skills.'
NOTES
1. 'Skilled to Go' offers learning resources for
teachers in the form of activities such as games, quizzes,
listening and video activities, and a range of tactile materials
as well as comprehensive teacher notes and background consumer information.
2. The evaluation was carried out by LLU+ which is a teacher
training and consultancy centre based at London South Bank University.
3. The pilot programme involved trialing two modules of the
'Skilled to Go' toolkit in a range of contexts and
settings with 16-18 year old and adult learners. Data collection
was undertaken at the beginning and end of the pilot programme to
evaluate the effectiveness of the toolkit by benchmarking
learners' consumer confidence and knowledge, their perception
of their consumer, LLN and IT skills and their ability to handle
consumer scenarios with related literacy and numeracy skills.
Learners' and teachers' feedback on the modules
throughout the pilot programme was used to adapt 'Skilled to
Go' activities.
4. Prior to the launch, a pilot programme took place with
learners and teachers in two large further education institutions:
City and Islington College, London, England, and Glasgow College
of Nautical Studies, Glasgow, Scotland. Over a six week period, a
total of 135 learners in 11 different learning contexts spent over
500 hours trialing materials from the Buying and selling and
Technology modules of the 'Skilled to Go' toolkit. Of
these, 78 learners participated in the profiling and benchmarking
data gathering activities. A total of 95 learners and 10 teachers
took part in the feedback on the resources and the results were outstanding.
5. 'Skilled to Go' was launched in June 2008 on the OFT
website. To see the web pages go to: http://www.oft.gov.uk/skilledtogo.
http://www.oft.gov.uk
PUBLIC enquiries: 0845 7224499 enquiries@oft.gov.uk
OFT
reports and consumer information leaflets are available free
from:
OFT, PO Box 366, Hayes UB3 1XB 0800 389 3158 oft@ecgroup.uk.com