On 7th October 2005, the Basic Skills Agency will host the 2005 Agency Wales Conference, which will focus on dissemination of practice worth sharing in teaching and the development of the basic skills of children, young people and adults in Wales.

The conference will cover three main themes of Promotion and Motivation, Improving Teaching and Learning, and Evaluating and Measuring Impact.

Following on from the successful first phase, the Basic Skills Agency will be overseeing the second phase of the Welsh Assembly Government's National Basic Skills Strategy. October's conference will mark the start of a continuous process of dissemination of effective practice which will ensure that the lessons learnt in the first four year phase of the National Strategy inform its future.

Jane Davidson, Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, and Keynote speaker will address delegates. Key Basic Skills Agency field staff will join Agency Director Alan Wells OBE in sharing and debating practice worth sharing from experience to date and will draw upon examples from schools, colleges and employers.

"We're certainly doing something right in Wales." says Alan Wells, "Our strategy, based on a partnership with LEAs and schools rather than centralised, has seen standards in English and maths rise at the end of primary school from a lower point than in England in 1999, to higher than in England in 2004. We're keen to share just what has been going right in Wales and make sure the steady rise in standards continues."

Over the next two years, the Agency plans to continue these rising standards across all age ranges, cradle to grave. Amongst our aims are for 90% of parents in our target group to have improved their ability to support the development of language and number skills of their young children and for 100% of post-16 basic skills providers in Wales to achieve the standards required by the Basic Skills Agency Quality Mark by 31 March 2006.

1. The Basic Skills Agency – a Government funded national organisation working at arms length from government – is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the National Strategy, Words Talk – Numbers Count, on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.
2. The Basic Skills Agency is the national development agency for literacy and numeracy in England and Wales. We are funded primarily by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Welsh Assembly Government. Our mission is to contribute to raising standards of basic skills in England and Wales. Our aims are to develop approaches that most effectively improve standards of basic skills and disseminate good practice. Our Patron is HRH The Princess Royal, the Chairman is Garry Hawkes CBE, and the Director of the Basic Skills Agency is Alan Wells OBE.
3. We define basic skills as 'the ability to read, write, and speak in English or Welsh and use mathematics at a level necessary to function and progress at work and in society in general'.
4. For further information regarding the conference, please contact Toni Schiavone on 07776 187 942 or email tonis@basic-skills.co.uk
5. For further information please contact Dilys Alam at the Basic Skills Agency on 020 7440 6618 or email dilysa@basic-skills.co.uk For out of hours media enquiries please call 07799 643 972. To request a media interview with Agency Director Alan Wells OBE, please contact Ruth Yarnit on 020 7440 6604 or email ruthy@basic-skills.co.uk