IALS and Essential Skills in Canadian Literacy Policy and Practice: A Descriptive Overview

This paper gathers descriptions on the use of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and essential skills cross Canada. IALS was developed as a population measure to lay out the distribution of skills and their relationship to other social and economic attributes. The information was taken from federal, provincial, and territorial governments' web sites searched between January and March 2013. The paper has six sections: Literacy Definitions, Literacy Policy, Literacy Benchmarks, Literacy Assessment, Workforce and Workplace Programming, and Literacy Organizations and IALS and Essential Skills. Also included is the Annex 1: International Adult Literacy Surveys: 1994-2013. This review provides a snapshot at a specific point in time, of the influence or uses of IALS on policy and practice in Canada. It confirms that IALS has a central place at the level of official statements in the Canadian literacy landscape. It shows some consistency in definitions taken directly or influenced by IALS and/or Essential Skills. However, in relation to benchmarks and assessments tools, provinces and territories are generally guided by their own education and labour market contexts. The review also shows that Essential Skills has become integral to labour market programming in many provinces and territories.