Eamon Delaney left school at 16. After an accident on the family farm, he was needed at home to work and admits he had no interest in school at the time.

The 39-year-old says he never hated attending school and enjoyed the sporting aspect, but had always struggled with reading and writing and this left him “very much behind – big time”.

In subsequent years he farmed with his father and uncle in their native Kilkenny. When the time came to start his own family and build a home with his wife Sharon, Eamon knew the farm could not support three families. He began looking for alternative employment and focused on jobs that required manual labour.

“What affected me the most was that I knew I had plenty of ability, but I had no belief in myself, I put myself down the whole time. There were jobs out there, and I was well capable of doing them – but I felt I wasn’t strong enough on the biro.”

Three and a half years ago, Eamon took the first step in returning to education. He contacted the National Adult Literacy Agency (Nala) and arranged to attend a literacy course with Clonmel Education and Training Board (ETB).

After much hard work, Eamon is now ready to undertake a course in caring for the elderly, a career path he always longed to pursue.

However, there was another motivating factor for Eamon in attending the literacy course: he wanted to do it for his children, Eamon Junior and Anne, who are eight and five respectively. “I wanted to do it for my kids more so than anything else: 90% for the kids and 10% for myself. If the kids were coming home with their homework, I wanted to help or be able to give them the correct medicine if they were sick.”

One in six

According to an OECD survey conducted in 2011/2012, one in six Irish adults has difficulty understanding basic text. This equates to over half a million people nationally.

Clare McNally, communications manager at Nala, explains that the term “functionally illiterate” may not indicate illiteracy in the sense of being unable to comprehend any text, but refers to not having the skills to participate fully in society.

“Very often we meet people who may have left school for one reason or another and they have gone straight into the workforce. They may have gone into an area where they didn’t necessarily have to practise their skills every day,” she says.

Listen to a discussion of the issue in our podcast below:

“Most people can read and write a little bit, but are just so self-conscious about being placed in a situation where they might have to do that quickly, that they tend to hold themselves back and are possibly overly self-conscious.”

From her experience as a literacy tutor, Clare has found that people often tend to be weak in one area and strong in another. People may be poor at spelling, but good at doing mental arithmetic.

“What we would always say is don’t let it hold you back. You can, for free, learn these things again, get up to speed again. Once you start that process, you tend to gain the confidence to try other things. It is a great service, and people might be surprised to hear that there are over 50,000 people attending adult education in literacy and numeracy around the country.”

SOSRead

As well as the long-term solution of going back to education, new technology has been developed to help those who have difficulty reading and need to understand a piece of text immediately.

Recently launched, SOSRead is a unique app that was developed in Ireland. John Moore, head of communications and marketing at SOSRead, explains that the app allows users to send a picture of text they want read and get a voice recording of it sent back through the app. They aim to send all readings back within 30 minutes, but it may be sooner. The first read is free and after that each one costs €1.30.

“We wouldn’t see people using it very regularly, it is like having extra security. You know if you go somewhere you are not going to be stuck, that you have a thing in your pocket and if the worse comes to the worst you can use it,” he says.

“For example, if someone was on their own minding a sick child, they are not a good reader, it’s four in the morning and they are not able to make out the instructions on the medicine. Or, in an agricultural setting, you might be a farmer that has gone to the back field to do spraying work and realise you can’t figure out the instructions on the back of the drum.”

Changes

Eamon outlines a number of ways going back to education changed his life. He no longer worries about being asked to fill in a form, he has new career opportunities and can help his kids with their homework. Despite all this, Eamon says the biggest impact that improving his literacy had was in boosting his confidence, allowing him to become more involved in the local community again.

“If you were to have asked anybody about me, they’d say Eamon wouldn’t have interacted much with the community. I’m three miles from the village of Tullaroan, I gave up sport maybe about 10 years ago. Now with my own young lad I took over training the under-eight hurling, I’m more involved. I feel now if I am at a meeting I can voice my opinion, whereas before I wouldn’t have said anything. That is what going back to education has done for me.

“People will probably say: ‘Ah ya, sure he’s 39, he has a lot going for him, he has two kids.’ No. If you are 65 and had problems with education, it’s just not too late to go back and have the willpower to do it,” he says. CL

If you or a friend are interested in undertaking a literacy course, freephone Nala on 1800 20 20 65. For further information about SOSRead, visit www.sosread.com.

Skills for working in farming

As technology continues to evolve at an ever-rapid pace, it is now commonplace in our everyday lives. Being au fait with computers and the internet is often described as the “new literacy”.

Education and Training Boards (ETB) across the country are running Skills for Work courses, which allow people in various different employment sectors to upskill. It may be of particular interest for our readers to note that ETB centres run a Skills for Work course specifically for farmers, which is free for eligible candidates.

Skills for Work coordinator at Tipperary ETB Brian Donnelly explains that the course teaches farmers computer skills, basic accounts on Excel, emailing and navigating the Department of Agriculture’s website, agfood.ie.

“Farmers would use agfood.ie to do calf registration, herd registers, transferring cattle and that sort of thing. We have access to a training portion of the website, which allows farmers in a simulated classroom environment to practise transferring cattle to each other.”

Brian says that farmers do not need to have experience with computers to participate. Everything from turning on the computer to transferring calves is covered. The coordinator also highlights that, out of all the courses for different groups, farmers tend to have the highest attendance.

“One thing we notice, the attendance, particularly with farmers, is very high. I would say for two reasons: One, they are learning, enjoying and farmers get a real benefit from this.

“Two, particularly for farmers, we see a social benefit as well. In the main farmers are working on their own and this gives them an opportunity to go out and meet fellow farmers one evening a week.”

Cotact the further education section of your local ETB or see www.skillsforwork.ie.