Welcome

As part of the work to lift the skills of New Zealanders in the workforce, the Literacy and Numeracy for Adults: Te Arapiki Ako website provides information and resources to strengthen literacy and numeracy teaching and learning for adults.

Did you know...

Approximately 51 percent of adults have numeracy skills lower than those needed to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work.

Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey 2006.

Assessment Tool

Assessment tool.

The Literacy and Numeracy for Adults Assessment Tool is on schedule to be available for use in March 2010.

There are three key steps to getting ready: Deciding on an organisation administrator, signing the acceptable use agreement and applying for an ESAA role as an organisation administrator for the assessment tool. Read more >>

Programme in action

Malo le tauivi, malo le taumafai

A cluster group of Pacific peoples from a range of workplaces came together twice a week, from March to November this year to gain skills in verbal communication, health and safety and to improve their numeracy and literacy skills through learning about IT and computing. The sense of achievement from the group was overwhelming and for many, the first chance to gain recognition and unit standards. Each person had an individual learning plan but common goals were to improve workplace communication between colleagues and to learn computing skills as tools in workplace communications.

McGirr Associates, Wellington

Programme in action

An female electrical services apprentice testing a series of electrical meters.

“The institution has gone from being one in which there were pockets of interest in literacy, language and numeracy (in the schools of bridging education and language studies and the learning centre), to one in which these have become general concerns.”

Programme in action

A worker using a computer.

“The tutors found out that, if a student has not got their head around a previous math problem, they cannot understand the higher levels of math understanding. The tutors started to identify and intervene when they could see a person is ‘struggling’ instead of just saying out loud to the student, ‘Didn’t you learn this at school?’ or ‘He can’t do these units because he didn’t learn percentages at school,’ which sort of puts an end to catching up on learning for the student when most of our students are second-chance learners. Now, the situation is, ‘Hey, we can give you a hand with your maths’. 50% percent of New Zealanders don’t understand this problem – we will help you understand how to do this.”

Programme in action

"This has opened my eyes to teaching"
You don’t have to be with James, Philip and Carolyn for very long to feel their energy for what is being achieved with literacy and numeracy at Waiariki Institute of Technology.
James (at left) a carpentry tutor (Level 3 & 4) based at the Tokoroa campus is new to tertiary education and training.
“I want to be a better teacher and this has been a total transformation for me”, he says about the literacy and numeracy professional development and support from Carolyn Bourke, Co-ordinator for Embedding.
Now James says he is much more aware of his relationship with the students, their literacy and numeracy needs and is even more alert to the impact of the changes he has made in his own delivery.

Read more ...