Essential Skills

Essential Skills Fact Sheets

Essential Skills are abilities that equip individuals to fully participate in their workplace and community. They are not technical skills, but attitudes and capabilities.

Essential Skills are building blocks for learning other practical workplace and social skills. They include the ability to:

• Read text (English/French).
• Use documents (agreements, charts, tables, blueprints).
• Solve mathematical problems (arithmetic, calculation).
• Write in complete meaningful sentences.
• Speak and give information in a coherent, clear fashion.
• Work with others in a cooperative, positive way.
• Think through problems and find solutions.
• Use Computers and Internet.
• Learn new skills and upgrade.

Today's changing and competitive economy requires high performance in the workplace. Essential Skills are becoming as complex as the work settings that demand them. Introduction and practice of the essential skills will lead to a more flexible and innovative workforce.

Below, we cover the following topics:

1. The need for investment in Essential Skills and basic education
2. Is Investment in Essential Skills development worthwhile?
3. Essential Skills may be the cornerstone of the future economy and society of Canada

The need for investment in Essential Skills and basic education:

In it’s 2007 Annual Report card for the Economy, the Conference Board of Canada states that:

"[A]n educated population is so important to Canada’s future. Well-educated citizens are more actively engaged in society at all levels and tend to make better personal choices that affect their quality of life. They also earn more than the less well-educated and make an important contribution to business innovation, productivity and national economic performance."

Manitoba statistics bear out these claims. A person with a grade 12 certificate had an annual income more than $10,000 higher than someone without. Getting young people their grade twelve diploma has become the goal of a whole “second chance education” industry in Manitoba. More than 100 adult literacy programs and adult learning centres dot the Manitoba landscape. They are provided by the Manitoba government to assist adults to improve their skills, get their diplomas and move into productive work and take more active roles in their communities.

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Is Investment in Essential Skills development worthwhile?

In the same 2007 report, the Conference Board notes that:

“There is a strong and direct relationship between investments in education, educational attainment and economic growth. An average per capita increase in education of one year increases aggregate productivity by 5 per cent.”

In Canada’s economy today, this would add, the Conference Board asserts “ more than $60 billion to our GDP.”

In Manitoba the comparable increase in GDP would be about $ 2 Billion or $1800 per Manitoban.

Addressing basic education upgrading the Conference Board said:

“A 1 per cent increase in numeracy and literacy skills would lead to a 1.5 per cent permanent increase in GDP.”

The Conference Board’s conclusion is that:

“A strong performance on education is vital to good citizenship, better quality of life and improved productivity and innovation.”

A 2009 study by T. Scott Murray, former director of Statistics Canada’s International Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (IALSS) led him to conclude that an investment of $6 Billion nationally into adult upgrading and education would lead to a complete payback on investment in under 6 months. An input of this kind would ripple through the whole society improving workplaces, communities and the lives of individuals.

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Essential Skills are the cornerstone of the future economy and society of Canada:

The Conference Board of Canada observes that Canada’s education system does quite well by international standards. It notes that while Canada “has a high rate of secondary and post-secondary completion,” a fact that “testifies to the effectiveness of the education system for the mainstream participants.”

There is a group of students for whom the system does not work well: “those who are “weakly attached” to the school system.” This group includes disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged people, Aboriginal people, immigrants and mature workers.” However the core of this group is Canadian adults who lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, even though many have completed secondary school.

The conference Board cites the statistic that “over 7.5 million adult Canadians have low basic skills and low levels of literacy. The International Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey of 2003 found that 42 per cent of Canadians (40% in Manitoba) between the ages of 16 and 65 had levels of literacy too low to allow them to be fully competent” in most jobs in our economy.

Mature workers aged 50 and over is another important group of weakly attached and underserved people. Mature workers are typically long established in the labour force, but often find that they need new knowledge and skills as their workplaces change due to advances in technology and the development of new products and services. Improving their literacy and basic skills is essential to their gaining more advanced skills and competencies.

The Conference Board points out that “currently, neither public education nor corporate training is providing the resources mature workers need.”

One problem that has emerged is that real investment in training in Canada is falling. In 1996, employers invested $842 per employee, but in 2006, they invested only $699 (1996 $). Employees’ skills deficiencies are clearly not yet a major priority for Canadian employers, who leave learning largely to Canada’s public education system.

More attention “needs to be paid to adult basic education because of the significant number of adult Canadians who are at low levels of literacy. These low literacy levels arise from a multiplicity of factors, including disability and social exclusion, and will require a more broadly integrated approach to change outcomes.

It is also important to improve Canada’s system for lifelong learning, especially for mature workers in an aging workforce.

Governments could assist by offering tax incentives to employers for target development of particular skills that are in short supply.

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