The service was extensively trialled over 12 months by Printing Industries in NSW before being made available to printing companies throughout Australia.

Bill Healey, CEO of Printing Industries says the online assessment service will bring national consistency and efficiency to apprentice and trainee pre-testing.

He says, “Our service is based on the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Vocational Indicator (VI) platform which is a nationally recognised and standardised system. Candidates complete an online assessment covering literacy, numeracy, abstract reasoning and mechanical aptitude.

“The results are compiled into a series of easy to read reports forwarded onto the sponsoring employer immediately following the test. The results provide a written and chart based assessment of the candidate’s performance based on their response to a series of 20 questions in each of the assessment areas.”

Also commenting, Ian Walz, national manager commercial services at Printing Industries says that each response to the literacy and numeracy questions also contain an Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF) indicator assessing the candidate’s learning, reading, writing, oral communication and numeracy levels.

He says, “This system has many uses including assisting with the identification of a learning path for candidates to make progress towards the skills needed in relation to qualifications, work demands or even social contexts.”

Walz adds that because the assessment relied on a computer based system using the RGB colour gamut, it could not be used to assess colour blindness.

He says, “We will continue to provide colour blindness testing separately using the established evaluation card system that has proven so effective over many years.”

The online assessments are available through all Printing Industries offices.

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