Making Sense of Lifelong Learning (PDF)

training. The 2000 study by the Basic Skills Agency (BSA) found that 24 per cent of adults in England are functionally illiterate and that the same percentage of the population is innumerate. Simultaneously a comparative study by the OECD found that Britain had more illiteracy than other Anglo-Saxon and European countries. More alarmingly, whereas other countries had illiteracy and innumeracy concentrated among older people, in Britain the literacy problems covered the entire adult age range. For adult literacy Britain was .fth from the bottom of the nine countries in the OECD. And if that was not enough a survey of reading habits plotting the percentages of the population aged 16 to 65 who reported reading a book at least once a month between 1994 and 1998 showed the UK ranked thirteen out of twenty countries. New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Hungary, the USA, Denmark and Finland ranked one to twelve, respectively. Below thirteenth place were the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Chile, Portugal and Belgium. Considering the numbers of men and women seen clutching books on public transport and who somehow manage to read them with rapt attention, that list is a sobering commentary on the general literacy level of the population. But at least it begins to lay the foundations.

Or does it? Another OECD study, Knowledge and Skills for Life, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tells a different story. Published in 2001, it gives the results of testing 250,000 15-year-olds across thirty-two countries and records their scores and relative positions on a league table for mathematics, reading and science. It turns out that while not at the top of each league, British youngsters are in the top quarter for reading and maths and just behind Japan, Finland and Korea in science. The mixed news is about the connection between family backgrounds and attainment levels.