Literacy
I found the article i was looking for and mentined regarding Premier McGuinty's comment at the Liberal Fundraiser to decide what to do with " po' folk" and that the government passively allowed about 1/3 low standard graduation or about a 30 percent drop out rate. This article came out in Nov 2005
. 40 per cent fail literacy test, StatsCan finds
CTV.ca News Staff
A new report on adult literacy says 40 per cent of Canadians do not meet everyday reading requirements, and the numbers haven't changed much in the last decade.
The Adult Literary and Life Skills study by Statistics Canada found that 42 per cent of Canadians do not have everyday reading skills.
The flip side is that about 58 per cent of Canadians aged 16 to 65 have skills in the top three literacy levels in prose. That means they can meet most everyday reading requirements.
The study, done in 2003, involved more than 23,000 Canadians and also looked at literacy scores in six other countries.
The other participants were Bermuda, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the United States and the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.
The study tested the ability of participants to understand and use information contained in various types of written material.
As well, it also tested proficiency in problem solving and numeracy, meaning an ability to think and express oneself effectively in quantitative terms.
And, it seems, not much has changed in a decade. The average literacy score for Canadians in 2003 hasn't changed significantly since 1994 when the same survey was conducted.
"I wouldn't say it's surprising," he said Jean Pignal, national study manager for the Canadian component of the findings released by Statistics Canada.
"It's pretty much what we found in 1994."
What that means today is that "nine million Canadian aged 16 to 65 are below what many consider to be the minimum level required to function effectively in a modern, developed, knowledge-based economy."
Literacy advocates and educators expressed concern over the findings.
"I think it's striking that in 10 years we haven't made any progress," Paul Cappon, president and CEO of the Canadian Council on Learning, said Wednesday.
"We talk about life-long learning quite a lot ... so you think we would think that we would have been making progress. And we haven't."
Another source of concern is how economics and wealth may affect a person's ability to read.
StatsCan found that parents' level of education had a significant impact on the literacy scores of their children. That was true in all countries surveyed.
In Canada, young people whose parents had completed 12 years of schooling scored 24 points higher than young people whose parents completed eight years.
Still, StatsCan cautioned that not all young people whose parents had low levels of education ended up with low literacy scores.
In some countries -- including Canada and Norway -- many young people scored at the highest levels of literacy despite their parents' relatively low levels of education.
As well, young people in this country performed better than older Canadians, the study found.
As well, the researchers sounded the alarm over a trend in the last decade where young people have actually seen their literary scores decline.
This was particularly evident among young people whose parents had low levels of education.
"We know that skills that aren't used tend to deteriorate over time. It needs to be reinforced through work or personal practice," said Pignal.
"Literacy is more like playing the piano than riding a bike -- it's a practice makes perfect type thing."
About one in every seven Canadians -- or 15 per cent -- scored the lowest performance level, meaning that a large number of Canadians have problems dealing with printed material and most likely identify themselves as people who have difficulty reading.
This was down slightly from 17 per cent in 1994.
Canada ranked roughly in the middle among the countries that chose to participate in the study. Only two countries -- Bermuda and Norway -- performed better than Canada on the prose scale.
In fact Norway performed highest on all four scales. In document comprehension -- reading graphs and charts -- Canada was second.
Canada placed third behind Norway and Switzerland in both numeracy and problem solving.
Adults in the United States performed slightly worse than Canadians on all scales.
With files from The Canadian Press
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