It mistakenly assumes that remediation rather than a continuing education is the solution to unemployment. Funding must be tied to a well researched response to training for employment, understanding of literacy and learners. Skills required for employment in the 1990s are complex. They include the ability to handle a wide range of spoken and written texts. Literacy is not just reading and writing.
Literacy education is a life-long process.
The language and literacy demands of the workplace and of our society are constantly evolving and changing. There is now an enormous diversity of texts used for communication and learning in a global economy. Literacy education must include not only document literacy but also mathematical, graphic and electronic literacies. It must emphasise the capacity to read and respond to a complex range of texts with different purposes and audiences and in a variety of different media. The nature of the Australian population is also complex.