Having language, literacy and numeracy skills may seem a fundamental prerequisite for any worker.
Having language, literacy and numeracy skills may seem a fundamental prerequisite for any worker.
But, the Industry Skills Council says many Australian workers struggle with these basic skills – a problem that is starting to show flow-on effects.
The ISC’s No More Excuses report said about 53 per cent of working-age Australians had difficulty with numeracy skills, 46 per cent of Australian adults struggled with reading and 13 per cent were classified in the lowest literacy category.
The council incorporates 10 vocational education bodies.
According to the report, the outcomes for industry are not good; it said the capacity to meet Australia’s growing demand for skilled workers was being hampered by poor LLN standards across the workforce, which affects their ability to learn more skills.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA supported the ISC’s statement this week, saying it was essential there was a renewed push to lift numeracy and literacy standards among workers to meet the skills demands in WA.
“Employers expect that young people entering the workforce are literate and numerate and have a wide range of generic skills and attributes that will help them transition into the workforce,” the CCI said.
The problem of workers lacking basic skills is not confined to bottom-rung blue-collar workers.
The report said people in supervisory and higher positions also had low LLN skills, an outcome attributable to many factors.
It said LLN skills could deteriorate over time when not used, skills were not built into enough vocational education training (VET) programs and the stigma attached to low, basic skills led staff in higher positions to hide their low LLN skills.
The ISC said factors like workers ignoring deficient skills, employers ignoring the issues because it was not their business and placing blame on schools meant the solutions required a multi-faceted approach that included “far-reaching cultural and structural change”.
“The size and complexity of the LLN challenge means that there is no single answer,” the report said.
“The ISC believes that responsibility for building the LLN skills of Australians should be shared by industry and all education sectors. Nothing less than a coordinated response to the LLN challenge will succeed.
“Workplaces have two broad options for addressing LLN issues: build or bypass. The build solution involves building employees’ LLN skills to meet the workplace LLN demands. The bypass solution involves modifying workplace processes to reduce the LLN demands.”
The ISC also called on the federal government to help fix the problem and said the scale of government support for growing the VET sector needed to improve.
The CCI said it had long advocated for overdue reforms in the education system.
“A flexible and competitive education system, which responds to the needs of individuals and industry, is critical to ensure every child learns the skills that they need to be job ready,” it said.
