Bright children could pass a new government test in functional skills - aimed at proving their worth to employers - as soon as they start secondary school, it emerged today. Twelve-year-olds could ...

JOBSEEKERS will have to pass a basic skills test and could lose their unemployment benefits, under tough new measures being pledged by Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary today. In her first ...

Under proposals, students would be required to take a separate exam in "functional" literacy and numeracy, including writing letters and working out a budget. They would have to pass the tests to get ...

The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, has said the government will have failed if adult literacy does not improve "massively" within five years. He said the way seven million British adults ...

I thought I was bad at the basics – but now I hear that a fifth of trainee teachers cannot do maths or spell simple words. One in 10 failed their final-year literacy and numeracy tests twice in a row.