Service Skills Australia welcomes the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, The Hon. Julia Gillard’s announcement that the Government will fund half the cost of training for existing workers of two of Australia’s largest retail organisations under the Productivity Places Program.
Service Skills Australia, the Industry Skills Council for the service industries, will work with Woolworths and Westfield to deliver training to existing workers under the program.  The announcement is particularly welcome for the retail trade, an industry in which nearly two  thirds of workers do not hold post-school qualifications and at a time of economic uncertainty.
“The retail industry is currently experiencing a skills shortage of suitably qualified staff who wish to
pursue a life-long career within the retail industry” CEO Jeanette Allen said.
“The Productivity Places Program will greatly assist both Westfield and Woolworths to retain their existing staff and allow them to move into future management roles”.
“This in turn creates new employment prospects for entry level positions, and will increase the
businesses productivity levels, and increase workforce participation”.
Westfield will have seventy-five employees trained in a Diploma of Retail Management and Woolworths will train a total of 103 employees at Certificate III in Retail and forty-two employees in a Certificate IV in Retail. The retail industry is the largest employing industry in Australia, with more than 1.5 million workers, 15% of the Australian workforce.
Background
Earlier this year, Service Skills Australia (SSA) was offered an opportunity to submit an expression of interest to Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations from interested employers that would be prepared to participate in a pilot program to train existing workers in skill shortages areas under the Productivity Places Program.
SSA in collaboration with their industry partners, made a number of submissions at this time and in late October, SSA received correspondence that confirmed the Commonwealth was prepared to match the employer contribution up to 50% of the cost of training. Formal applications were submitted last month from a range of service sector employers that were interested in training their existing workforce to improve workplace productivity and participation.

Without a doubt, today’s world is knowledge-based and depends on the rapid exchange of information. Countries that are equipped with the technology and knowledge to participate in the new electronic world are major players in its socio-cultural and economic developments. Education is changing, too. With the advent of multimedia technologies and the Internet, it is now possible to reach people who would otherwise have no access to certain courses or educational opportunities.

Electronic learning, or e-Learning as it has come to be known, makes use of the Internet and digital technologies to deliver instruction synchronously or asynchronously to anyone who has access to a computer and an Internet connection.

By some estimates, between 800,000,000 and 1,500,000,000 people world-wide understand English. Approximately 350,000,000 people use English as their mother tongue (mainly in the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa). Some 400 million use English as a second language (in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, and the Philippines). At least another 150 million people use English with some degree of competence. Furthermore, it is an official language in more than 60 countries (Crystal 1992, p.121). With such a large number of people using English, it is not surprising that English has become the lingua franca of the modern world.

In the current state of affairs, the global dominance of English in commerce, science, and technology has created the need for an ever increasing number of people to learn to communicate in the English language. There is a market demand for English courses on a global scale, and the English language teaching industry is thriving.

As English is experienced across different linguistic contexts, it may be experienced primarily as a language of education, or higher education, as well as in official contexts, popular culture, and the local vernacular. It may be regarded as a language of social and economic advancement, or it may be seen as an imposition or a necessary evil. However it is seen, the English language is used across the globe in countless contexts to very different effects.

Thus, proficiency in English is seen as essential for participation in the global arena, particularly in the economic domain, in which transnational corporations conduct business and trade beyond the national borders. In addition, the global spread of the English language is further facilitated by American media products of mass communication such as videos, music, news, magazines, TV programs, and so on. The dominance of English on the Internet reinforces the flow of international information in English, and affirms the structure of global communication. English is the most widely used and taught language in the world, and it is accepted easily almost anywhere.

Second-language acquisition and intercultural learning can be greatly facilitated through e-Learning. At present, e-Learning is itself becoming an important global business not only in the commercial sector, but also in the support that national governments are giving to educational institutions to increase their export income. There is a drive for change brought on by technological innovation to which governments and institutions of higher learning are responding at a rapid pace.

Learn Skills aims to address these needs outlined above through the provision of web-based language learning in English initially, and then to expand this range.

Courtesy: In Global Peace Through The Global University System, 2003 Ed. by T. Varis, T. Utsumi, and W. R. Klem, University of Tampere, Hameenlinna, Finland

Galway, Ireland – 3rd September, 2008 - Learn Skills the web-based skills and compliance based company has now partnered with Interaction Training, a leading innovative learning solutions provider from Australia.

Learn Skills will be able to provide a comprehensive range of high quality, interactive course direct from the Learn Skills platform, a total of 89 courses ranging for basic Digital Literacy, ICT skills to Leadership and Management Training.  “The quality of these materials will greatly enhance the learning experience and lead to a more informed and skilled workforce”, said Sean Grifffin, Co-Founder of Learn Skills.

Some of the more interesting titles include:

• Word 2007 (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
• Excel 2007 (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
• Goal Centred Time Management
• Stress Management
• Leadership Approaches and Theories
• Motivation Concepts

These courses are available for individual purchase or as part of a bundle options supported by the Learn Skills LMS.