Country background report: Addressing the training and assessment needs of adults with low basic skills in Australia

• Summary
• Purpose
• Approach
• Research questions
• Methodology
• Organisations

Summary

Purpose

This project provides a snapshot of how Australia goes about addressing the training and assessment needs of adults with low basic skills. It identifies key challenges for adult basic education, and reports on national and state and territory government language, literacy and numeracy initiatives (including government-funded training programs and projects). We then provide an account of the nature of vocational and community-based training provision, and assessment policies and processes. Following this it discusses formative assessment and innovative teaching practices, and materials and resources designed to provide assessment guidance. It also provides a description of the nature of the adult language and literacy workforce and opportunities for professional development. It ends by drawing some conclusions.

Approach

Synthesis-based desk research

Research questions

Investigate the way Australia addresses the training and assessment needs of adults with low basic skills including reporting on the various initiatives occurring at national and state and territory levels.

Methodology

The project has a prescribed format for developing the country background reports as there are several OECD nations participating in the project. The report is to be written in a format that would be accessible to both technical and non-technical education readers.

Organisations

This project has been funded under the NCVER Core-research program.