Assessing ALLS vs ACSF

If you’re familiar with adult language, literacy and numeracy concepts then NCVER needs your help!

Language, literacy and numeracy are critical for greater workforce participation, productivity and social inclusion. Being able to measure how skilled people are, and any changes in their level of skill, is important for getting a sense of how well language, literacy and numeracy programs are working for learners.

The federal government uses the Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALLS) survey to measure an outcome in the National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development. But this data is only obtained every 10 years. The Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF) is also being used to provide information on adults’ literacy and numeracy skills in a range of contexts.

Both the ALLS and ACSF have five performance levels and it’s sometimes assumed that these levels are equivalent. But are they? The National Centre for Vocational Education Research, together with Victoria University and Educational Measurement Solutions are running a short online survey to find out whether the levels are equivalent.

They’re asking teachers/tutors/lecturers familiar with adult literacy and numeracy concepts to anonymously rate a student, whose literacy and/or numeracy levels are most familiar to them, against statements and sample tasks aligned with the ACSF and ALLS frameworks.

Every completed survey has a chance to win one of six Apple iPads (3rd generation 32GB Wi-Fi) valued at $649 (RRP) each. Go to http://literacymap.com/s3/ to enter the survey. You can also access the survey from the NCVER web site: go to the ‘Quick Links’ section.

Contact: Michelle Circelli

Senior Research Officer, Research Management Branch

National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER)

T +61 8 8230 8646 F +61 8 8212 3436 E michelle.circelli@ncver.edu.au

W www.ncver.edu.au

And of course, you are welcome to post your comments here about your  experience of the survey or even about the likelihood that ALLS and ACSF can be successfully equated!

 

2 thoughts on “Assessing ALLS vs ACSF

  1. I am worried that the powers that be might use the results from this research without really understanding the difference between the two wildly different ways of describing literacy levels that ALLS and ACSF represent. ALLS is conducted by the ABS and draws on a sample of the whole population (including doctors, literacy teachers et al), and it is compulsory to participate if you are selected.

    We don’t have any comparable data produced by the assessments via the ACSF, as the assessments apply to particular people wishing to do some sort of program, and the likelihood of anyone else being willing to be assessed is quite small. So even if we find that level 3 ACSF is about a level 2 ALLS, it still doesn’t allow us to make any connections to the big question: are the literacy skills of the whole Australian population increasing?

    Despite their own drawbacks, NAPLAN and PISA can give us information like this as most kids are in school and thus captured within the results. The same sort of data collection is not possible for adults, as most people will never be in some sort of vocational or adult education at the same time, at least not unless there is a huge increase in funding!

  2. Cheryl, I agree. The purpose of the research for ALLS and use of the outcomes bares little relationship to ACSF purpose. I think the other thing we need to know is WHY are they comparing the two? To delete one of them? To make extrapolations that are/not relevant? For funding purposes? To beat up suburbs of people that don’t do well?

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