NZITO Benefits of ELN in the Workplace & Assessing Literacy and Numeracy in the Workplace

Benefits of ELN

Why is ELN Important? A 2008 Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey found that 43% of New Zealanders lacked the literacy and/or numeracy skills to fully participate in work The Government has identified literacy and numeracy as a key factor that requires improvement For employers there are clear benefits in having a workforce with good literacy and numeracy skills as they are more productive, safe and engaged in their work All ITOs are required to embed literacy and/or numeracy in level 1 & 2 qualifications from 2013 and have a requirement to begin this at level 1 in 2012

What does that look like? Almost half of New Zealanders lack the literacy and/or numeracy skills to effectively participate in the workforce. Reducing the % of people in the red sector increases New Zealand’s productivity and provides a better future for all new Zealander's % of NZers who require literacy and/or numeracy support

Is it your company’s job? This is a normal and understandable response from many employers, especially considering competitive business pressures But….. There are strong links between productivity and having a workforce who can confidently read, write, and accurately complete equations.

How does the company benefit? Employees will…. - have a better understanding of written and verbal work instructions - have greater engagement in their work - make fewer mistakes - understand compliance requirements - behave more safely But most importantly…. employees with good literacy and numeracy skills are enabled to contribute more to their work.

What is involved? Trainees are required to complete two assessments, one at the beginning and one towards the end of their training programme Embedded literacy and/or numeracy exercises are included in new training workbooks provided by NZITO The workbooks take an integrated approach which will save time for assessors through reducing over- assessment and paperwork These workbooks have been designed to be unobtrusive and contain materials that incorporate good design principles

Assessing Literacy & Numeracy

ITO Funding NZITO will provide funding to companies to assist with the administrative costs of administering the ELN assessments. Employees must complete two ELN assessments – one prior to the programme and one towards the end of the programme NZITO will fund $50 + GST for each pre ELN and post ELN assessment where –The employee has an active enrolment AND NZITO has received at least one result against the programme Pre ELN assessment funding will be paid the month following the receipt of the first unit standard assessment result and an ELN assessment by NZITO Post ELN assessment funding will be paid the month following the receipt of the ELN assessment by NZITO This funding level is set until December 2012 and will be subject to NZITO’s normal funding review process in December 2012

Assessing Literacy & Numeracy (1) Learners are required to complete two assessments using the Tertiary Education Commission’s literacy and numeracy assessment tool. ELN assessments take a maximum of 45 minutes to complete. One of these assessments is required at the beginning of the training (pre-assessment) and the other is towards the end of the training (post assessment). Assessments can either be done online or on paper. Sites will need to decide whether they want their trainees assessed on literacy or numeracy. Learner details are only needed for the first assessment. After that their details will be retained in the system.

Assessing Literacy & Numeracy (2) The assessments are done to measure the effectiveness of the embedded training, and not to assess the individual It is important that trainees know that they will be assessed twice (at the beginning and towards the end) Employees should be assured that their results will be kept confidential and are stored on the Governments database (not NZITOs) The timeline below shows the points when trainees need to be assessed for either reading or numeracy

Assessing Literacy & Numeracy (3) Refer to the flowcharts on the following pages for an outline of how the assessment process works. If you have an urgent request to setup trainees for assessment – please but also phone the training support team and advise them of the For urgent situations assessments can be setup in as little as 3 hours. You will need to enter learner details onto the spreadsheet provided which we can use to bulk upload trainee details to setup their assessments for the pre-assessment

Bulk upload template Below is a sample of the bulk upload template that will be provided in excel format. Up to 200 trainees can be setup on this form Use a fresh form for each new group The yellow cells indicate where information is required. If you don’t know the trainee’s NSN number we will check for this and set one up when needed.

ELN pre-assessment flowchart

ELN post-assessment flowchart

Online assessments (1) If online assessments have been selected go to this website: Or you can find a link to the literacy and numeracy assessment tool on the NZITO website via the following link:

Online assessments (2) Once a learner has their code and they go to the website, all they need to do is enter their code in the field below