Workshops Basic Skills and Engaging the Hard to Reach Christine Townley, Basic Skills Agency Key Issues: Learning Partnerships have a key role in achieving the target of reducing the numbers of people with poor literacy and numeracy by 50% by 2010. They can find out the basic skills needs of the community and co-ordinate the plans to meet those needs. Funding will be the key to engaging the hard to reach. General funding, but ring fenced for basic skills, is needed to enable Learning Partnerships to address the needs of the community. Discretionary LSC funding could be used. There needs to be mainstream funding to build on the success of the non-schedule 2 projects. There is a need to bridge the gap between the level of demand and the level of need; there should be a range of provision to meet a range of individual needs. The aim is to have good planning horizons with adequate funding to provide effective provision which has progression built into it.