Across Canada, employers, educators, labour organizations and governments are working together to ensure that Canadians have the skills that are needed for full participation in home, work and community life. By improving skills levels, workers can increase their productivity and safety at work, becoming active contributors to Canada's economy.

In Canada, reading, using documents and numeracy skills are some of the skills commonly referred to as essential skills, literacy skills or foundational skills. Although these skills are now being called Skills for Success, they remain the foundation to learning all other skills.

These types of skills are:

• used, to varying degrees, by all individuals;

• needed for work, learning and life;

• foundational to acquiring technical and job specific skills;

• important for adapting to workplace change;

• transferable across contexts.

The Success in Apprenticeship project primarily focused on the skills of reading, using documents, and numeracy from Canada's former Essential Skills model.