TCAL was delighted to receive a $145,000 workforce planning and development grant from Skills Tasmania in July.
Skills Tasmania is the state training authority and also is responsible for workforce development, and takes a sectoral approach to industry development. In our application we argued that it was essential to strengthen and grow the adult literacy workforce so that sectors and the training system could achieve their goals.
We built our proposal on our 2014 workforce development project (by Escalier McLean), highlighting what has been achieved so far and what has changed. A major change is the impact of the 26TEN Campaign, which has led increased demand for services, a re-conceptualising of the scope of the workforce, and an improved awareness of the centrality of improved LLN levels to Tasmania’s wellbeing.
26TEN convened the Adult Literacy Workforce Advisory Group (ALWAG) in 2014. It is co-chaired by TCAL President, Deborah-Stroh Reilly, and President of the Tasmanian VET Network, Simon Wiggins. All employers of adult literacy practitioners are members. It oversaw the preparation of the grant. Its definition of the workforce is: adult literacy practitioners are people, paid or unpaid, working within the three domains [education, workplace and community] which have a specified function of building adults’ literacy and numeracy skills. It makes it clear that all volunteer literacy tutors form part of the workforce and must be considered in any plan.
The project runs over 2 years. It has three stages: 1) environmental scan and workforce profile, 2) domain workforce issues and challenges, and 3) plan consolidation and governance. The three domains of education, workplace, and community will be considered separately first, and then a whole of workforce plan prepared.
TCAL would like to invite contributions from ACAL members from both a state and national perspective. While our focus is on Tasmania and the Tasmanian workforce, we hope the work done will advance and support the national adult literacy agenda.
For further information, please email Sian Midgely, project coordinator: tcalwfdproject@gmail.com.