Measuring Literacy & Essential Skills

The essential skills of reading, document use, and numeracy (otherwise known as the literacy skills) are measured by TOWES using five levels.

Skill levels

At minimum, Canadians require skills at Level 3 or higher to handle the demands of work and everyday life; it is considered the "desired level" for safe and productive work in a knowledge-intensive society. Surprisingly, according to Statistics Canada, almost half of Canadian workers do not possess adequate literacy skills and scored below Level 3, the generally accepted literacy standard.

Literacy and Complexity

Literacy encompasses more than just reading; it is the ability to find, use, and process information in prose, documents, and quantitative terms. It is measured on a continuum of proficiency. The measurement scale of literacy has five broad levels (level 1 to 5) that correspond to a range of raw scores (0 to 500).

scale

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