This position paper has been prepared after reviewing a number of websites and documents regarding what seem to be the similarities and differences between essential and academic skills.
Essential skills are those skills required for everyday life, i.e., skills required to do everything from figuring out public transit, completing a job application, balancing ones chequebook, etc. There is a consistency across countries in this definition, probably due to their citations of the various IALS and ALLS projects. These projects have formed the framework for essential skills worldwide. Essential skills are described as the literacy skills required for everyday functioning in society.
Canada, too, has adopted the IALS/ALLS definition of essential skills insofar as they link directly to the literacy domains used by the IALS/ALLS project managers: Reading Text (Prose), Document Use, and Numeracy (Quantitative). However, HRSDC has gone further to identify an additional six essential skills. At the moment HRSDC defines Essential Skills as the skills needed for work, learning and life. They provide the foundation for learning all other skills and enable people to evolve with their jobs and adapt to workplace change.
People use Essential Skills to carry out a wide variety of everyday life and work tasks. They are not the technical skills required by particular occupations but rather the skills applied in all occupations. Essential Skills enable people to do their work. Essential Skills are enabling skills that help people perform the tasks required by their occupation and other activities of daily life, provide people with a foundation to learn other skills, and enhance people’s ability to adapt to change.
The nine Essential Skills are