Adult Education Editing and Proofreading Services

Adult learners arrive carrying whatever their last experience of education left them with, and for a substantial number that is failure, humiliation or an assessment at fifteen that they have never revised. Somebody considering a return at forty-three is not weighing a course against other courses; they are weighing it against the possibility of being made to feel stupid again in front of strangers. Almost nothing in a standard course description addresses that, which is why so many people who enquire never enrol.

We edit what adult and community education providers produce — course descriptions and programme information, enrolment and entry information, initial assessment and screening material, essential skills and literacy programme content, English for speakers of other languages material, digital skills course material, access to higher education course information, learner handbooks and induction material, individual learning plans, tutor guidance and session plans, progression and next-steps information, funding and fee remission explanations, employer and partnership material, and inspection and funding body reporting. Our editors work on the writing that decides whether someone walks through the door.

Addressing the fear of returning is the specific job the course description has to do and the one it almost never attempts. Descriptions written around content — the units covered, the qualification gained, the hours required — answer questions the reader is not yet asking. We write these so the first lines acknowledge who the course is for in terms people recognise themselves in, including that most of the group will not have studied for years; so what a session actually involves is described, because the fear is specific and usually concerns being asked to read aloud, write in front of others, or reveal what they cannot do; so the initial assessment is explained as something that places people rather than tests them, with what happens to the result; so the cost, any fee remission and what it covers is stated plainly, since uncertainty about money stops people enquiring; and so the exit route is named — what this leads to and what it does not. Providers that write this way convert enquiries at markedly higher rates, and the effect is largest among the learners the funding is meant to reach.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including learner records and funding material. We are editors rather than teaching, assessment or funding advisers, and we offer no view on curriculum, assessment decisions or funding eligibility. What we can do is make the writing plain and unfrightening to someone who last sat in a classroom a long time ago.