Measuring Literacy & Essential Skills
The
essential skills of reading, document use, and numeracy (otherwise
known as the literacy skills) are measured by TOWES using five
levels.
At minimum, Canadians require skills at
Level 3 or higher to handle the demands of work and everyday life;
it is considered the "desired level" for safe and productive work
in a knowledge-intensive society. Surprisingly,
according to Statistics Canada, almost half of
Canadian workers do not possess adequate literacy skills and scored
below Level 3, the generally accepted literacy standard.
Literacy and
Complexity
Literacy encompasses more than just
reading; it is the ability to find, use, and process information in
prose, documents, and quantitative terms. It is measured on a
continuum of proficiency. The measurement scale of literacy has
five broad levels (level 1 to 5) that correspond to a range of raw
scores (0 to 500).
