ABET
Adding skills to the workplace with numeracy lessons
For people who missed a formal education during childhood, adult learning programs which include numeracy lessons can be a life saver. Few people could disagree that an adult who has problems with reading and numeracy is saddled with a serious handicap as numerical illiteracy makes a real negative difference to a person's life. Research has established that day-to-day living is much bleaker and more fraught with problems for people who haven't had the chance to attend numeracy lessons. The message could therefore hardly be clearer, literacy counts but numeracy appears to count even more.
Adults need to be able to handle money wisely which requires good understanding of parts, proportions, and percents. An important goal of numeracy lessons is to to enable learners to understand information around them, particularly in the workplace. Learners need to be prepared to understand numeracy, as they might choose or end up with a job requiring at least the basics. Attending numeracy lessons is important; concepts must be learned and expressed through particular languages, for example 2 + 2 = 4 may be understood, whereas the English expression "two plus two equals four" is not, which means a learner's difficulties in numeracy may be due in part to a lack of proficiency in English. Activities for numeracy lessons can range from recognizing numbers to calculating percentages, from reading a bus schedule to baking a cake. In programs for adults learning English as a second language, numeracy skills and the language for these skills needs to be integrated into the curriculum in order to prepare the learners to be successful.
Numeracy classes are held on-site or at places most convenient to learners.
To meet the growing demand for numeracy lessons, programs have been developed to reach all those who have missed the chance in the past, and Triple E, with their creativity and ease of implementation, are especially effective with the equipping of learners to cope effectively in the workplace:
