Introduction

The province of Manitoba supports the development and delivery of adult focused education programs through Adult Learning Centers (ALC) and community-based literacy programs. These programs are administered by Adult Learning and Literacy (ALL) and are designed to enhance the skill set of adults in Manitoba to better understand and employ written information in daily activities at work and in the community. People also have the opportunity to obtain high school credits so that they can access better employment or higher education. As well, ALL administers the General Educational Development (GED) Testing Service, which offers a GED Diploma that is accepted for employment, apprenticeship admission and further training programs.

Identifying Adult Learners

Researchers at the MCHP can identify adults registered in Adult Learning Centre courses by accessing the Enrollment, Marks and Assessment Data. Students who obtain a course credit in the ALC are identified with a unique ALC number, and ALC schools are identified by an indicator IS-ALC in the school table. Students who have diplomas and have come back for extra credits can also be identified by setting the diploma indicator to "Y" in the enrollment table.

Cautions

1. As of 2001, the education database has a record every time an ALC student earns a course credit upon completion of the course, and no longer record students who enroll and do not finish. When doing cross sectional research these students will show up in the numerator if they achieve course credits but will not be counted in the denominator. Researchers should be cautious not to count all course credits and attribute them to all enrolled students because some ALC students could be enrolled but not have earned the course credit.
   
   
2. Prior to the 2002/03 school year data is intermixed with regular high school students. Typically adult learning students are older than 21 years of age and are registered as S4 students but there are exceptions.