The social and economic importance of encouraging adults to engage in continuous
learning
throughout their working lives is now undisputed. The latest Canadian evidence
suggests that less-educated adults who obtain a formal educational credential
later in life realize significant wage gains (Zhang and Palameta, 2006). Moreover,
as Coulombe and Tremblay (2005) show, there is now some international evidence
to suggest that raising literacy and numeracy for people at the bottom of the
skills distribution is more important to economic growth than producing more
highly skilled graduates. Despite this evidence, very few adults with low levels
of initial education actually do participate in job-related skills upgrading.
The obvious question arising from this finding is why. This report investigated
the adult learning systems of selected Canadian provinces to determine how well
they meet the needs of learners with low levels of initial education. Our key
finding is that, in all of the provinces studied, less-educated individuals
are not well served by the current system. In this section, we identify the
major gaps in adult learning policies. Then, after setting out some overarching
principles to serve as a guide, we propose several steps that should be taken
to move towards adult learning systems that enable less-educated adults to realize
their economic and social potential.
In the late 1990s, observers became increasingly concerned that Canada did not have a coherent adult learning policy. For example, Doray and Rubenson (1997) concluded that Canada has no “formal framework for human resources development and adult education policies”. Similarly, Bélanger and Tuijnman (1997) characterized Canada’s adult learning system as being provided by “a bewildering array of sponsors, including colleges and universities, community colleges, libraries, labour organizations, religious organizations, commercial organizations and businesses”. Much has changed since these reports were written. In the past five years, all of the provinces studied in this report have either made or begun to make substantial changes to their adult learning policies and programs (Powley, 2005).
Alberta has recently made significant changes to its adult learning system. In 2003, Alberta Human Resources and Employment (AHRE) launched the Skills Investment Strategy which transformed the way it delivers services (AHRE, 2003). This strategy consolidated the design and delivery of 19 previous programs into four core programs that provide career information, deliver basic and occupationally focused skills training, and foster industry and community partnerships. One of the most significant aspects of the Skills Investment Strategy is that AHRE programs now include working individuals as well as the unemployed. (Figure 1 in Appendix A illustrates how skills training programs are delivered in Alberta).
British Columbia has also introduced a number of changes to its adult education system. In 1999, the government introduced a new adult secondary diploma and launched a project to develop a more co-ordinated and learner-centred approach to adult basic education (ABE) programming. Two of the most important outputs of this project were the development of an articulation process that allows adult learners to make a smooth transition between the secondary and postsecondary systems and the elimination of tuition fees for ABE courses.