Ireland fourth last in study of literacy

The literacy levels of the average Irish adult places us 20th out of 23 developed countries in a major international study.

The 18% of people here who are at the lowest level of literacy is slightly below average and represents a slight improvement over the 22% of Irish people with the lowest skills revealed in a 1997 study, making this one of only five countries to show an improvement since then.

But Education Minister Rúairí Quinn says the overall performance at literacy, but more particularly at numeracy, is “not as strong as I would have liked”.

The average-scoring Irish adult ranks the country 19th for numeracy, with a 256 score that is 32 less than table-topping Japan.

Our problem-solving abilities are around average but place Ireland 18th of the 24 countries assessed for the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey of adult skills.

Employers’ group IBEC said the figures are a serious wake-up call for the education system from early childhood to lifelong learning and it demanded an urgent response.

National Adult Literacy Agency director, Inez Bailey, said the literacy improvements are welcome but were to be expected in light of changing population profiles in the 19 years since the last such study conducted here. “The last time, we were second-last to Poland who were really bad, but Poland have outperformed us and made significant gains, whereas we have made small gains,” she said.

“There has been an over-emphasis on the smart economy and higher education is very dominant in the education system, but this area has got very little attention,” Ms Bailey said.

The study shows adults preform below average in terms of numeracy, with our average scores significantly below average. The Department of Education said this echoes the findings of previous international research feeding into the new Project Maths syllabus at second level.

In line with other countries, younger people have the highest scores in literacy numeracy, but those aged 25 to 34 performed better than those still at school or more recently left school in the younger age categories.

Women and men have almost identical average literacy scores but there is a 12-point difference in the numeracy scores of the average male (262) and the average female (250).

There are similar gender gap trends when it comes to problem solving, in which Irish adults were about average. But more than 40% still scored at the lowest levels and only one-in-four were in the highest scores, against one-in-three internationally.