Challenge of illiteracy - Students are falling by the wayside

IF FIGURES predicting that between 10% and 15% of our working population will be illiterate in 2016 — just the lifetime of a decent car away — are correct, we are facing huge educational and social challenges.

That any person should leave a school in Ireland without basic functionality in the three Rs — reading, writing and arithmetic — is not acceptable in a country that likes to imagine itself a modern, clued-in, happening European state.

The implication of the claim by CORI — the Conference of Religious of Ireland — is that for every 10 people in the workforce, only eight will be able to read and write.