Labour Market Forecasts in Relation to Future Literacy & Numeracy Professional Development

Our analysis of recently released data relating to New Zealand and regional labour market and economic profiles indicates moderate growth in a number of specialised trades-related jobs. This is good news for vocational training in general and we expect that this will translate into continued demand for ALEC’s professional development and practical approach to embedding literacy and numeracy into trades training.

Infometrics expect highest growth in engineering and related trades, but for our purposes the following list of trades should show moderate growth:

• Construction including engineering, related infrastructure and other trades, as well as lower skilled labourers.
• Agriculture and forestry including skilled animal and horticulture workers as well as mobile plant workers.
• Manufacturing including engineering and science related trades, food trades, factory process workers, and general trades.
• Telecomunications workers
• Health including caregivers

The forecasts also suggest that while spending may be down in tertiary education, the demand for tertiary trained professionals will increase.

TEC Statement of Intent

As per the current TEC statement of Intent we believe that our organisation will contribute to:

• A high quality educational outcomes to prepare and maintain a relevantly skilled, flexible workforce.
• Access to foundational education for a range of learners at both local and national levels.
• Further collaboration between TEOs engaged in vocational education and professional development.
• The development of new financially viable and sustainable education technology business models as we explore the online spaces becoming available.
• Provision of NCALNE (Voc) and related professional development targeted at YG providers, providers focused on delivering outcomes relating to Māori and Pacific learners at levels 1-3, and Trades Academies.
• A “doing more with less” approach consistent with lower levels of government spending through promotion of education and trainingwhere literacy and numeracy understandings are embedded into vocational and other content areas.

Performance & Quality

We have:

• ŸConsistently met our TEC requirements as per past plans. Last year the Christchurch earthquake meant that two key ALEG funded NCALNE groups were cancelled. However, we were able to carry some of these learners over to the start of this year and meet.
• ŸMaintained high standards with regards to quality assurance:
  • 9 November 2010: NZQA is Highly Confident in the educational performance of Adult Literacy Education and Consulting Limited.
  • 9 November 2010: NZQA is Highly Confident in the capability in self-assessment of Adult Literacy Education and Consulting Limited.

Key Changes Planned

• Increased use of the PathwaysAwarua.com online resource with our ILN learners as well as promoting its use in our professional development courses.
• Increased focus around learners at Step 3 on the Learning Progressions framework in our local Taupo programme. Even to cope with the demands of relatively low level computing, learners need to be at Step 4+ for reading comprehension and vocabulary.
• Currently investigating online and blended solutions for delivering professional development for the NCALNE (Voc) and NDipALNE including outside of New Zealand. There is unfilled niche for this training for educators who are geographically isolated, both nationally and internationally. If we submit and gain course approval from NZQA for the NDipALNE we are unsure at this stage as to the most appropriate funding and business model for this kind of training. However, as well as looking at various online learning platforms we are also investigating several online business models that could be adapted to our purposes.
• We are looking to consolidate organisational knowledge around embedding literacy and numeracy into set of easily communicable key attributes and skills. This will be known as the Baseline knowledge for embedding literacy and numeracy and will describe and support in simple terms all aspects of the current national infrastructure for literacy and numeracy including the Learning Progressions, LN for Adults Assessment Tool, related professional development material, the role of the NCLANA, existing unit standards and qualifications.

The reason for this development is that there is still limited understanding from educators about how what embedded literacy and numeracy training actually is, and what organisations should be doing. As well as a teaching framework for professional development, this set of key skills and attributes will provide a simple-to-understand design canvas for embedding literacy and numeracy. Our intention is to make portions of this content available with a creative commons licence so that it can be freely distributed and disseminated.

• We think that there is an export market for the entire national infrastructure for literacy and numeracy including the entry-level qualification that we currently deliver. The TEC has signalled that some commercialisation of the infrastructure may be desirable. As niche experts in this field we would like to be involved in this discussion when it happens.