Welcome

As part of the work to lift the skills of New Zealanders in the workforce, the Literacy and Numeracy for Adults: Te Arapiki Ako website provides information and resources to strengthen literacy and numeracy teaching and learning for adults.

Did you know...

35 percent of firms have stated that at least some of their employees had difficulties with such tasks as filling in forms, understanding safety warning or accurately measuring volumes.

Business NZ

Assessment Tool

Assessment tool.

The Literacy and Numeracy for Adults Assessment Tool is on schedule to be available for use in March 2010.

There are three key steps to getting ready: Deciding on an organisation administrator, signing the acceptable use agreement and applying for an ESAA role as an organisation administrator for the assessment tool. Read more >>

Programme in action

Malo le tauivi, malo le taumafai

A cluster group of Pacific peoples from a range of workplaces came together twice a week, from March to November this year to gain skills in verbal communication, health and safety and to improve their numeracy and literacy skills through learning about IT and computing. The sense of achievement from the group was overwhelming and for many, the first chance to gain recognition and unit standards. Each person had an individual learning plan but common goals were to improve workplace communication between colleagues and to learn computing skills as tools in workplace communications.

McGirr Associates, Wellington

Programme in action

An female electrical services apprentice testing a series of electrical meters.

“The institution has gone from being one in which there were pockets of interest in literacy, language and numeracy (in the schools of bridging education and language studies and the learning centre), to one in which these have become general concerns.”

Programme in action

A worker using a computer.

“The tutors found out that, if a student has not got their head around a previous math problem, they cannot understand the higher levels of math understanding. The tutors started to identify and intervene when they could see a person is ‘struggling’ instead of just saying out loud to the student, ‘Didn’t you learn this at school?’ or ‘He can’t do these units because he didn’t learn percentages at school,’ which sort of puts an end to catching up on learning for the student when most of our students are second-chance learners. Now, the situation is, ‘Hey, we can give you a hand with your maths’. 50% percent of New Zealanders don’t understand this problem – we will help you understand how to do this.”