Literacy in Canada: What You Need to Know

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tracks important statistics around the world. They assess literacy with a standardized measure called the Survey of Adult Skills, which is designed to be repeated every ten years. As advocates for the reader, editors should know as much about them as possible.

The results of its first round were released in 2012, and I’ve discussed them in an earlier blog post. On December 10, 2024, they released the results of the second round, conducted in 2023. 

I encourage everyone to review the latest reports. They are relatively straightforward to follow, with country-specific summaries and lots of data to peruse. (I expect the federal government will be publishing additional material in the coming years, as they did after the first round.)

How literacy was evaluated

There are three main categories tested in the Survey of Adult Skills: literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving. Each category is broken up into levels (five for literacy and numeracy; four for problem solving). The levels are fully described in the main report (pages 58–62). Here are excerpts of the literacy level descriptions for context:

Adults at Level 1 are able to […] understand the meaning of short texts, as well as the organization of lists or multiple sections within a single page.

At Level 2, adults are able to access and understand information in longer texts with some distracting information. […] They can understand by paraphrasing or making inferences. 

Adults at Level 3 are able to […] identify, interpret or evaluate one or more pieces of information, often employing varying levels of inferencing. 

At Level 4, adults can read long and dense texts presented on multiple pages in order to complete tasks that involve access, understanding, evaluation and reflection. 

At Level 5, the assessment provides no direct information on what adults can do. This is mostly because feasibility concerns (especially with respect to testing time) precluded the inclusion of highly difficult tasks.

Source

OECD. “Do Adults Have the Skills They Need to Thrive in a Changing World?: Survey of Adult Skills 2023.” OECD Skills Studies. Paris: OECD, 2004.

Canadian literacy scores

The average literacy scores in Canada (for adults aged 16–65) fall in the level 2 range. While this is above the OECD average, 19 per cent of Canadian adults demonstrated “low” literacy (performing at level 1 or below), 20 per cent demonstrated low numeracy and 22 per cent demonstrated low problem solving. Jointly, 13 per cent were “low” in all three. 

Conversely, only 14 per cent of Canadian adults performed at level 4 or above in literacy, 15 per cent in numeracy and only 6 per cent in problem solving. The vast majority of Canadians (67 per cent in literacy, 64 per cent in numeracy and 72 per cent in problem solving) were placed in the level 2 and 3 territories.

Lessons for editors

What I have encountered in a highly technical regulatory context is that it’s easy for authors to forget that they and their colleagues are not necessarily representative of the population they serve. (For example, in Alberta, only roughly a third of adults have a university degree, but essentially everybody I work with does.) 

Part of my job as an editor is using data like this to encourage authors to write with more empathy and to prefer the simpler, more direct communication approach whenever possible.

How do you plan on using this information? What data jumped out to you when you read the reports? Tell us in the comments!

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