What evidence is there that basic skills training is effective?
A. Improvement in basic skills training can increase a company’s ability to recruit and retain staff while also improving productivity, profitability and jobsite safety: • An increase of just one per cent in literacy scores relative to the international average is associated with an estimated boost to national productivity of 2.5 per cent — worth $18 billion per year to Canadian Gross Domestic Product.4 • The costs of not addressing these issues can be high. Truck drivers with level one (lowest) reading skill, for example, are 176 per cent more likely to be involved in a workplace incident, such as accidents and spills, than those at reading levels three to five.5 Lower skilled adults tend to work fewer weeks, experience more and longer periods of unemployment, and earn lower wages. • At the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, the pass rate in the first-year carpentry program jumped from 73 to 100 per cent with the introduction of the basic skill intervention.6 Each student was
