TOWES - Canada's Essential Credential

• Products and Services

  
  
  • Assessments
    • General Series
    • Sector Series
    • Domain-Specific Assessments
    • Web-Based Assessments
      • System Agreements
      • Learner Portal
    • Custom Assessments
    • Complementary Assessments
    • How to Select an Assessment
    • Sample Questions
    • Results Reports
    • FAQ
  • Learner Materials & Instructional Resources
    • Building Workplace Essential Skills
    • A Day on the Job
    • On Target!
    • Skills for Working, Learning & Living
    • In Focus
    • Materials Comparison Chart
  • Professional Development & Administrator Certification
    • Administrator Training & Certification
    • TOWES Administrator Certification for Web-Based Assessments
    • Professional Development Programs
    • Presentations & Speaking Engagements
  • Consulting & Analysis
  • By Industry
• 
  
  

  Popular TOWES Pages

  • o  News & Events
  • o  Assessments
  • o  Learning Materials
  • o  Preparing for TOWES
  • o  Distributors
• 
  

  Essential Skills Resources

  • o  ESDC
  • o  Essential Skills Profiles

Assessments Overview

TOWES is an effective assessment that accurately measures literacy and essential skills needed for safe and productive employment: reading, document use, and numeracy.

TOWES is significantly different from other skills assessments as clients must assume the role of a worker and use information embedded in authentic documents to solve real workplace problems. Some of the documents that you might find include catalogues, order forms, labels, and schematics.  TOWES measure these skills using the same measurement framework used in IALS (International Adult Literacy Survey). TOWES has been proven to be psychometrically valid and unbiased.

All TOWES questions are created using a constructed response methodology. Constructed response assessments require the test taker to 'generate' an answer from the information provided. This methodology greatly reduces the opportunity for guessing, as test takers are never provided with multiple choice or true/false options.

There are different versions of the TOWES assessment available:

	The General Series contains content suitable for a wide variety of clients at different skill levels.
	The Sector Series contains industry-specific content and targets the literacy and essential skill requirements of specific occupational groups such as healthcare, office administration, apprenticeship, aerospace etc.
	The web-based assessments contain content suitable for a wide variety of clients at   different skill levels. They offer a variety of enhanced features, such as real time results reporting.
	Domain-specific assessments are available in paper-based and web-based format. These are available as standalone Document Use (DU), Reading Text (RT), or Numeracy (N), or as combined 2-domain tools.
	Custom assessments are created at the request of an employer or institution to meet specific needs not readily accommodated by our other assessments.
	In addition to our literacy and essential skills assessments, TOWES offers oral fluency assessments that measure the language skills needed in the Canadian workforce.