Case Study - Using the NRS in a Community Based Family Literacy and Numeracy Program

Identifying the target group of learners

The provider has adult literacy funding through the community sector which can be aimed at adults with children in the early years of schooling

adults with English as their first language and NESB long term residents (assuming some spoken English)

adults with a wide variety of personal goals

adults with insufficient literacy and/or numeracy skills to meet those goals.

adults with low reading and writing skills ( NRS level 1 &2 in reading and writing,and levels 1,2,or 3 in Oral Communication)

Outline the purpose and social contexts of the program

The purpose of the Primary Parents Program is to assist learners to develop literacy and numeracy to meet personal, community and/or vocational goals.

These activities cover NRS Aspects of Communication: Systems Communication, Procedural Communication.

They also relate to NRS (Level 3) of the Workplace & Social Contexts

Adapts the skills of one cultural context to another,
Understands texts which include meanings which are predominantly explicit
Performs without reliance on interaction with sympathetic participants/interlocutors
Uses a narrow range of skills and knowledge for preparatory courses

Identify learning outcomes or Expected Performance Outcomes

The proposed program aims to meet the following learning outcomes:

Parents can identify the purpose and meaning of a variety of communications from a school
Parents can respond to written requests from a school
Parents can communicate with their child’s school

When these are NRSed, that is, lined up with the NRS Workplace and Social Context levels, the NRS Aspects of Communication and the NRS Indicators of Competence, the program looks like this.

Learning Outcomes/ Expected Performance Outcomes	NRS Level and Indicators of Competence	Aspects of Communication
Parents can identify the purpose and meaning of a variety of communications from a school	Reading Indicator 3.1, 3.2	Procedural Communication Systems Communication
Parents can respond to written requests from a school	Reading Indicators 3.1, 3.2 Writing Indicators 3.4	Procedural Communication Systems Communication
Parents can communicate with child’s school	Oral Communication Indicators 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 Numeracy Indicators 3.10	Procedural Communication Systems Communication

Teacher/student ratio:	6:1
Part time class based program:	4 hours per week for 20 weeks (80 hours)