Introduction

In this chapter, we draw on our study of adult literacy practitioners (Allatt and Tett, 2018) to explore the ways in which the human capital (HC) model of knowledge impacts at the transnational, national and local levels on literacy programmes. This model claims that there is a universal relationship between economic development, individual prosperity and vocational achievement. HC was defined by Becker (1975: 16) as ‘any stock of knowledge or characteristics the worker has (either innate or acquired) that contributes to his or her productivity’. This focus on productivity came at the expense of other forms of knowledge that lead to the development of an individual's potential, greater well-being and so on; yet, it has become universally accepted in transnational policy documents from the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (for example, OECD, 2013; EUR-Lex, 2015). When the HC model is applied to literacy learning, it prioritises skills-focused education and reduces the person ‘merely to “human capital”, not as a life to be lived, but as mere economic potential to be exploited’ (Gillies, 2011: 225).

The HC perspective, which regards countries and their citizens as competitors in a global marketplace, also gets translated into measurable indicators, such as those used in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), which aims to ‘measure the key cognitive and workplace skills needed … for economies to prosper’ (OECD, 2016: 1). These powerful standards then become taken for granted in our everyday practices, meaning that the focus of education is on the national productivity agendas that are in the interests of industry, often at the expense of the needs of employees, who are treated as an investment rather than as social and cultural beings (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). In addition, the narrow domains of skills-focused knowledge perpetuated by these interests become accepted as normal and so are difficult to challenge (Gorur, 2014).

At the national level too, policy documents in the UK similarly prioritise HC over social capital outcomes in adult literacy programmes. For example, Scottish policy states that ‘if an individual has a weakness in [literacies] skills, they are less likely to make an effective contribution to Scotland's economy.… This is potentially a drag on Scotland's economic capacity’ (Scottish Government, 2012: 1).