Sudbury has a lot to learn about literacy

Sudbury lags behind the rest of the province when it comes to literacy, Sudbury city councillors heard this week.

The percentage of people in Sudbury below level 3 in terms of literacy – defined as the skill level required for successful high school completion and college entry – is 49 per cent, compared with 40 per cent for of all of Ontario. The rate is even higher for Francophones, at 55 per cent.

The percentage of people without a diploma, degree or a certificate from a training institution is also worse than the provincial average: 25.7 per cent, compared to 22.2 per cent for all of Ontario.

Vicki Jacobs, chair of the Learning City Initiative in Sudbury, said those depressing figures aren’t going to change overnight, or even in a few years.

What’s needed is a long-term effort focused on lifelong learning.

“We’re below the provincial average,” Jacobs told city councillors. “We would like to, over the next 10 years, improve that, and in a generation, exceed it.”

She said studies have shown a broad range of benefits for people who have more education: better health, better income, more opportunities, more friends and stronger support systems.

“There are no poor effects of education,” she said. “The Canadian economy would receive a $30-billion boost if literacy rates were improved by just one per cent.”

The Learning City initiative began through the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation in an attempt to prepare Sudbury to become part of the economy of the future, where a lifelong ability to learn will be required.

“We wanted to develop a workforce that is resilient enough to retrain in mid-career so they can get the jobs that are here,” Jacobs said, of the original reason behind the initiative. “But it has grown into something bigger than that.”

The first practical example of what it means to be a learning city will be a “play-based learning festival,” she said, where families will be invited to take part in different activities. The idea is to show parents the link between play and learning.

“Research has shown that children develop very well through free play,” Jacobs said. “Parents will be able to see how their children learn.”

The goal is to attract 1,000 people to the event, which they hope will be held in spring 2013.

She also plans to promote the cause through a social media marketing campaign, by hosting community events aimed at fostering the idea of lifelong learning, through workplace initiatives to encourage training and by building partnerships to help those who need training and education.

“We want to get people thinking about continual learning. If you stop learning when you’re 20 years old, and then lose your job when you’re 45, it’s really hard to retrain.”

Jacobs said literacy rates are studied every 10 years; the next report is due in early 2013 “We’ll use that as our baseline,” she said.

Posted by Arron Pickard