Test Of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES)
Literacy and essential skills
Across Canada, employers, educators, labour, organizations and governments are working together to ensure that Canadians have literacy and
essential skills needed for full participation in home and community life. By improving literacy and essential skill levels, workers can increase their
productivity and safety at work, becoming active contributors to Canada's economy.
What are essential skills?
Essential skills are the skills needed to carry out everyday tasks for work, learning and life. They are applied in all occupations and enable
individuals to perform workplace tasks. They are foundation skills upon which all other skills are built and are a good indicator of an individual's
ability to adapt to change.
Essential Skills :
1- Reading
Reading refers to reading material in the form of sentences or paragraphs. It generally involves reading notes, letters, memos, manuals,
specifications, regulations, books, reports or journals. Reading includes:
- @ Forms and labels (if they contain at least one paragraph)
- @ Print and non-print media (for example, text on computer screens)
- @ Paragraph-length text in charts, tables and graphs
2- Document Use
Document Use refers to how a person understands and interprets visual displays of information-specifically information in which words, numbers,
icons and other visual characteristics (e.g. line, color, shape) are given meaning by their spatial arrangement. It generally involves interpreting or
reading graphs, lists, tables, blueprints, schematics, drawings, signs and labels. Document Use includes:
- @ Print and non-print media (for example, equipment gauges, clocks and flags)
- @ Reading/interpreting and writing/completing/producing of documents
Note: These two uses of documents often occur simultaneously as part of the same task. For example, completing a form or creating a
spreadsheet.
3- Numeracy
Numeracy refers to a workers' ability to use numbers and to think in quantitative terms. Numeracy includes:
- @ Numerical estimating
- @ Money math
- @ Scheduling or budgeting
- @ Analyzing measurements or data
4- Writing
5- Oral Communication
6- Working with others
7- Thinking Skills
8- Digital Technology
9- Continuous Learning
Assessments Overview
| General Series |
The General Series contains content suitable for a wide variety of clients at different skill levels. |
| Sector Series |
The Sector Series contains industry-specific content and targets the literacy and essential skill requirements of specific occupational groups such as healthcare, office administration, apprenticeship, aerospace etc. |
| Web Based |
The web-based assessments contain content suitable for a wide variety of clients at different skill levels. They offer a variety of enhanced features, such as real time results reporting. |
| Domain-Specific | Domain-specific assessments are available in paper-based and web-based format. These are available as standalone Document Use (DU), Reading Text (RT), or Numeracy (N), or as combined 2-domain tools. |
| Custom |
Custom assessments are created at the request of an employer or institution to meet specific needs not readily accommodated by our other assessments. |
| Complementary Tools |
In addition to our literacy and essential skills assessments, TOWES offers oral fluency assessments that measure the language skills needed in the Canadian workforce. |
Measuring Literacy & Essential Skills
The essential skills of reading, document use, and numeracy (otherwise known as the literacy skills) are measured by TOWES using five levels.
Level 1: Basic Skills
Level 3: Generally Acceptable Skills
Level 5: Highly Advanced Skills
At minimum, Canadians require skills at Level 3 or higher to handle the demands of work and everyday life; it is considered the "desired level" for
safe and productive work in a knowledge-intensive society. Surprisingly, according to Statistics Canada, almost half of Canadian workers do not
possess adequate literacy skills and scored below Level 3, the generally accepted literacy standard.
Literacy and Complexity
Literacy encompasses more than just reading; it is the ability to find, use, and process information in prose, documents, and quantitative terms. It is
measured on a continuum of proficiency. The measurement scale of literacy has five broad levels (level 1 to 5) that correspond to a range of raw
scores (0 to 500).
