Sunshine Coast LibrariesAdult Literacy Program

State Library of Queensland Literacy Forum 29 July 2014

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History

• Program began 25 years ago

• Small specialist staff

• Workforce of volunteer tutors

• Became an RTO 15 years ago

• Program predominately funded by external grants

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Program

Sunshine Coast Libraries offers a flexible Literacy and Numeracy program for adults within our community to assist them to become functionally literate.

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Some Facts

• Best practice - the only public library service in Queensland to offer this program

• RTO – offering accredited training• Conversational English classes• Specialist Adult Literacy staff and teachers• All our tutors are volunteers trained through

our RTO

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We aim to do the best for our students by:

• Providing quality training

• Providing them with quality tutors

• Having quality staff to support tutors and

students.

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Why be an RTO?

• We are a not-for-profit RTO

• We have to find money in our budget or through external grants to support the program

• Good potential volunteers look for programs offering accredited training

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RTO as part of a Library Service

• Gives our RTO a central community connection

• Libraries already have meeting rooms, computers, digital equipment, collections

• We have dedicated adult literacy collections in our libraries stocked through an informed purchasing policy

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Benefits

• We can offer nationally accredited training to our LLN participants (10344NAT Course in Adult Literacy and Numeracy)

• We train our own volunteer tutors in a nationally accredited course (30979QLD Couse in Volunteer Community Adult Literacy Tutoring)

• We can issue our own certificates

• Gives us an advantage when applying for funding

• Gives us an advantage with referrals from job agencies and community organisations

• Presents a professional approach to the way the program is conducted

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Volunteer Tutors

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• Most volunteers interested in this program are retired professionals

• They ask if the training we insist they do is accredited

• They are the backbone of our workforce

• Offer their time and expertise for free

• Fantastic library supporters

• Always open to new learning

• After training they become part of Sunshine Coast Council as council volunteers

What we look for in our tutors

• Good communication skills• Patience• Informality• Interesting backgrounds - work, interests• Belief - in the person's ability to learn.• Creativity• Empathy• Encouragement / Enthusiasm • Flexibility• Listening skills• Non-judgemental• Respect• Knowledge• Humour

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It's never to late to learn to read and write - ABC interview

Trained Tutors – the final product

• To have all necessary technical

skills/knowledge to do the job

• To fully understand their role and

responsibilities to this program and to

Sunshine Coast Council

• To be actively matched with a student in the

program

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What does being an RTO involve for our organisation?

• Being compliant with all ASQA training requirements

• Having a registrations audit every 5 years at least

• An enormous amount of paperwork, data collection and reporting

• Expense

• Becoming familiar with the VET industry

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Partnerships

As an RTO we can partner with another organisation for a fee to do training for them (in the past: Caloundra Community Centre; Noosa Library).

Local RTO’s that train in other VET courses can partner with us to do literacy and numeracy training with their students.

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Qualifications of Adult Literacy staff in an RTO

• They all need to be trainers with current qualifications.

• Course material and assessment material used in the two courses on our Scope needs constant review.

• Regular PD needs to be done by staff.

• Need to source other local RTOs who do similar training for course assessment validation.

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Future Predictions for the RTO within our organisation

• Expansion of Scope.

• Other parts of Council able to do their own training.

• Partnerships.

• Increased connections with local small business and job training providers.

• Changing diverse community needs drives program expansion.

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Finally

It’s all about the students!

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Thank you

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