National Adult Literacy Database

Across Canada and in most of the developed world, studies show boys and young men are increasingly falling behind their female peers in literacy levels and educational attainment rates. Father’s Day gave Essential Skills Ontario time to pause and think about the ramifications of these troubling statistics and to ask: what do they mean for the well-being of our future fathers-to-be and their families?

Community Learning Network, Literacy Alberta and the Centre for Family Literacy are pleased to invite you to be part of the Literacy & Learning Symposium 2013 Resource Fair. This province-wide professional development Symposium focuses on literacy and lifelong learning for adults, as tools for positive change.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) invites its members to its annual conference from October 21-25 (Monday to Friday) at the Congress Centre of Quebec. Registration will begin Sunday afternoon, October 20.

The Plain Language Association InterNational (PLAIN) 2013 Conference will celebrate developments in the field and the organization's 20th anniversary. Set for Vancouver, B.C., Oct 10-13, 2013, the event is attracting a dynamic lineup of global presenters exploring the way forward for plain language. It offers an excellent opportunity for you to learn more about plain language and how its advantages can benefit you, your organization and your clients. Professionals will share knowledge, best practices, research and skills.

Measures of Success (MoS) was a national research project of The Centre for Literacy that was designed to assess the outcomes of workplace literacy and essential skills initiatives beyond immediate end-of-program results. This is the executive summary of the final report for the project.

Interested in making your workplace more efficient? In this three-part series, workplace literacy and essential skills expert Sandi Howell talks about the benefits of skills training.

Across Ontario, communities are facing significant changes to their labour force, including: economic restructuring, shifting demographics, immigration or migration of youth, educational attainment levels and population increases and declines.

Community-based projects under the New Horizons for Seniors Program that enable seniors to share their knowledge, skills and experiences with others and help communities increase their capacity to address local issues are eligible to receive up to $25,000 per year, per organization.

Literacy means something very different in today’s digital world than it did in the resource-based economy of British Columbia 50 years ago. Different skills and knowledge beyond print literacy are now required, including oral communication, problem solving, analysis, computer use and numeracy. Continuous learning is necessary to keep up with a rapidly changing world.

The theme of this issue is “Always Learning”. Many of our articles reflect that theme; we have an article about financial literacy that should prove to be enlightening, and an article about a woman whose story fits the very idea of “Always Learning”.

This document is one of the resources to grow out of the SCALES (Supporting the Canadian Advancement of Literacy and Essential Skills) project, a three-year initiative undertaken by CONNECT Strategic Alliances, representing Ontario’s 24 publicly funded colleges. The project’s goal was to develop tools and best practices that would help practitioners working with unemployed and low-skilled workers to incorporate a Literacy and Essential Skills (LES) approach into their work.