Key partners
Business New Zealand
Business New Zealand is New Zealand’s largest business advocacy organisation.
Through its four founding member organisations – EMA Northern, EMA Central, Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and the Otago-Southland Employers’ Association – 70 affiliated trade and industry associations – and the Major Companies Group, Business NZ represents the views of over 76,000 employers and businesses, ranging from the smallest to the largest and reflecting the make-up of the New Zealand economy.
Business NZ is committed to enhancing New Zealand’s prosperity and productivity, and believes that action now on workplace literacy is mission critical to our future. Employers are committed to training and understand the importance of skills to their competitiveness. Employers measure and describe the benefits of workplace literacy and numeracy training as reduced errors and wastage; reduced accidents and lost time injuries; and improved communication and teamwork.
Council of Trade Unions
The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) is an active participant in programmes to increase language, reading and numeracy skills.
For the CTU, these skills are vital – they are what is needed for people to be active participants at work and in the community. Lack of these skills becomes a barrier to further education, to quality jobs and to achieving personal goals and reaching potential.
On a practical level, the CTU runs the Learning Representatives programme, which trains and supports workplace leaders to help their co-workers into learning programmes. This programme has a strong emphasis on literacy and numeracy skills.
Industry Training Federation
The Industry Training Federation (ITF) is a membership-based organisation that represents 39 Industry Training Organisations (ITOs). The ITF works to support ITOs as they facilitate industry skill development and workplace learning.
ITOs recognise that lifting the level of literacy and numeracy skills in the workforce is essential to improving business performance. They are committed to working in partnership to tackle literacy and numeracy for the benefit of individuals, firms and wider industries.
ITOs address literacy and numeracy issues in a variety of ways, but the main focus is to embed or integrate literacy and numeracy into industry training. The aim is that learners are able to meet the literacy and numeracy demands of the industry training they are undertaking, and therefore both learners and employers are able to reap the benefits of that industry training.
Ako Aotearoa
Ako Aotearoa is New Zealand's National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.
By focusing on enhancing the effectiveness of tertiary teaching and learning practices, Ako Aotearoa aims to assist educators and organisations to enable the best possible educational outcomes for all learners.
The use of the Māori word ‘Ako’ reflects the view that teaching and learning are two interactive parts of the whole education experience. Learning should be active and learners have responsibilities as well as rights. Teachers modify and improve their practice by interacting with active learners.