CléA: a Basic Skills Framework for Low Educated People?

Abstract

In France, French language is seen as a vocational skill. Companies are able to put in place French language vocational training for employees, mostly from foreign origin with very different sociolinguistic backgrounds. Many of these employees never went to school and, with vocational training, learn to read, write French and numeracy. Since 2016, a basic skills framework designed for low-educated adults called CléA (Key for Adults) has been developed by the French government so as to make every worker or unemployed people more autonomous, efficient at any workplace. Through an immersive ethnographic approach, we present the first outputs of developing CléA into two training courses. We analyse this basic skills framework, the way people are evaluated, if they pass the assessment, what training is put in place in case of failure, how this new approach is perceived by trained people, by their companies and if CléA could change things for low-educated people in France.