New OECD adult literacy report
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At the recent launch of the OECD International Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) report, OECD Secretary-General and former Australian Finance Minister Mathias Cormann spoke of the survey’s importance and value. You can watch the launch here:
You can download the “Do Adults Have the Skills they Need to Thrive in a Changing World?” report to find out about adults’ literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills in participating countries, but here’s a summary chart:
I blinked, cleaned my glasses, looked again. Where are the data for Australia? We’re in the OECD. We were in the last PIAAC survey, and were meant to be in this one. In 2018, our peak adult literacy organisations urged the government not to withdraw from PIAAC, and were assured we wouldn’t.
(The rest of this blog post is about Australia, but if you’re elsewhere, try these articles about the US, UK, Canada and Aotearoa/NZ results, or just google PIAAC 2024 and your country of interest).
Here’s a screenshot of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website information on the latest PIAAC survey:
No information about why the survey was ditched, though they’d already started selecting participants.
In March 2022, the Parliamentary Inquiry into Adult Literacy and its Importance report recommended:
After a change of Federal government in May 2022, the government’s November 2023 response to the Parliamentary Inquiry report said (on page 7):
Sorry, pardon? Didn’t the Australian Bureau of Statistics already have high cyber security standards? They had a decade to prepare for PIAAC. How did 31 countries, many with larger populations and lower per capita GDP than us, manage to sort out their PIAAC cyber security, but we couldn’t? Weird.
The Reading Writing Hotline website says there was “a lot of concern in the field about who may be surveyed about what, and how; and to what use the data will be put”, mainly because the last PIAAC survey showing 44% of Australian adults couldn’t read very well resulted in sensationalist headlines, but no serious government action, except in the state with the worst results (Tasmania). In an underfunded sector, why prioritise another expensive survey? (more on these arguments here). But when governments don’t measure something, it can mean they have no plans to manage it, and/or no idea how.
Roy Morgan Research, not the ABS, is now conducting the Understanding Skills Across Australia survey on behalf of Jobs and Skills Australia. This is also weird, given the government’s commitment to rebuilding the public service, and cutting back on private consultants.
The Morgan survey will almost certainly find that Australian adults are no more literate than they were a decade ago, and are perhaps less literate. The adult literacy sector still seems to mostly teach from the Ken Goodman and Marie Clay playbook (listen to Sold a Story if you don’t know what that means), so that won’t be a surprise. Check out the “How do we read?” section of the government-funded Reading Writing Hotline’s online tutor training program, here are a couple of screenshots with quotes to give you the idea:
After I’ve smashed a bit of crockery about this (taxpayer-funded, last year!), I’m going to calm down and put “encourage the Reading Writing Hotline to learn about the science of reading and programs for adults like That Reading Thing” in my New Year’s resolutions. If you have ideas about how to best do this, please put them in the comments.
Alison Clarke
6 responses to “New OECD adult literacy report”
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I too thought I must misplaced brain cells when I couldn’t find Australia in the latest report. The lovely people at the Australian Council for Educational Research assured me hadn’t. We hadn’t participated
Thank you for bringing that sad news to our attention. You pose a great question. Other than doing what you are doing, advocating and educating anyone prepared to listen I’m unsure how you tackle it. Perhaps reaching out to all organisations like yourself that support the Reading of Science and together plead with government to sit up and listen and try the Science of Reading ideas. I sense most governments will just hide behind an inquiry first though (or maybe I’ve watched to many episodes of ‘Utopia’ )
Hi Alison, Thanks for the PIAAC article.
On my to do list.
Re: Australian participation.
We heard about 12 months ago that Australia were going to go it alone, rather than participate in this round of PIAAC. Why – to better capture the rural and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population apparently. And yes via Jobs and Skills Australia. We have been monitoring their newsletter. There has been nothing from it yet, so thanks for the link. Love the information page – assumes you have adequate literacy and digital literacy to access this.
Less than 6 months ago, we heard there had been a reversal of the PIAAC decision, and Australia will be participating in PIAAC. But it is this next round. We understood the Jobs & Skills Australia survey had been stopped. Obviously not the case, based on your link above.
Silly me, I had assumed that the Round 2 PIAAC data collection was well underway. Nope. Round 2 data collection begins in 2025. Release of data – not until 2030.
So it will be 18 years between reports. Just not good enough.
I have looked at this latest 2024 PIAAC where it appears to have an average 6% decrease in skills across many countries, like US, Japan, South Korea etc, which suggests there is no reason why our data is not at least hthis also.
A few things with this new data, which will make it hard to compare and contrast with the previous findings – all was done via ipad/computer – it looks like an interchangeable term in the data from what I have read so far. That does have different outcomes for people with low digital skills. Irrespective, when we look at the research on reading comprehension online verses reading via printed material it is alwasy better and more indepth when via printed material. I have also looked at a couple of the example test items and wonder how anyone without decent digital literacy could even work through the content. There are a range of instructions for the test items about what to do. Were these read out to participants, if necessary? Any person we work with would not be able to read the instructions, nor any of the test items.
Some example test items appear to rely on working memory to answer at the next skill level. i.e. the story has disappeared, and now there are more questions to answer on the screen.
In viewing the example test items, and comparing with the skills level descriptions, it does appear to be is a much higher skill level at level 1 than previously.
It looks like PISA, and perhaps this new Jobs and Skills work survey, the 2024 Workplace Literacy report and the reports from the Gratten Institute, with the Australian Digital Inclusion Index, alongside any global conclusions from the latest PIAAC data will be our go to. Very very unfortunate.
Would love to meet with other like minded people to pull these various data points together to have a united voice on current low literacy needs in all our community.
Cathy
Hi Cathy, all interesting thoughts, I hadn’t realised you were tracking this survey too, and confused about what was happening. I’d love to chat about it sometime, I have been working with a few adults who responded well to the same kinds of strategies as kids, but without the kiddie materials and games in between work, yay. I’m old and grumpy now, and tired of having to always work games in there somewhere. Must now frock up and head out for NYE silliness, so let’s reconvene sometime NEXT YEAR ha ha. I also wonder what you think of Readable English: https://readablenglish.com? I’d love to try it, an interesting idea. All the best, Alison
Rest assured the Science of Reading is dominating the literacy scene. I heard primary classroom teachers will be replaced by speech pathologists who have been trained to use Science of Reading programs. They and the kids in P-2 will be in for a shock when they realize tutoring a group of kids after school is very different from managing a class of 24 + full time. I’m glad my granchildren are well beyond primary school. Luckily they can read despite missing out on all that testing – I suspect it’s because they are lucky enough to have parents who enjoyed reading to them. You will hear a lot of ill informed people suggesting there is only one way to teach reading and writing without ever having been in a classroom. It feels like the bullies are in charge with a black and white anti-intellectual approach. Ie I don’t need to know or understand another point of view – ridicule is the best approach! Unfortunately this is the prevailing attitude in a whole range of areas now where discussion and debate are foreboden. I imagine, in time, some of the Science of Reading zealots will retract their ignorant statements but it may take a while before they realize just how ignorant they are. Reading is complex but the vast majority of kids learn how print works without extra support. 20 percent of kids will benefit from extra support as needed and 10 percent will require 1on 1 support from a qualified literacy teacher. The need for extra assistance will be the same despite the program. Of course the desire to read and write depends absolutely on the attitude and positivity of the literate adults involved – parents and teachers. High stakes standardized testing can be detrimental in the early years.
Hi Timothy, I’m sure it’s no surprise that I don’t agree with your assertions that people who want teaching to be informed by high-quality scientific research are anti-intellectual, bullies, ignorant, zealots etc. Sorry you’re feeling angry, but it’s so great to hear that you think evidence-informed approaches are now dominant in our schools. In my experience teachers say, “This makes so much sense” and “Why wasn’t I taught this at university?” when they learn about the reading research. When they try evidence-informed teaching, they say “Wow, this works so well”. It’s long past time schools dumped the memorise-and-guess-and-let-kids-work-it-out-themselves approach to early literacy that makes so many children miserable, and has created so much inequality and injustice, especially in disadvantaged schools where many parents simply can’t read very well themselves, and can’t afford intervention outside school. I worked for years in schools with high refugee populations, where some kids’ mothers weren’t literate even in their home language, let alone English. They’d sign my forms with an X. Many of the people I went to rural government schools with are marginally literate, do you know any farmhands or truck drivers or people who clean toilets for a living, or anyone who has been to jail? It’s a useful reality check to talk to them about their experience. We currently have a long waiting list of miserable kids who have not learnt to read/spell well at school, in fact I was just talking to a mother about her daughter’s school refusal, and adding her to our list. The look-at-the-picture-and-guess books and high-frequency word lists she has been given are teaching her bad habits and a completely incorrect idea about how our writing system works, and that simply must stop. I hope you live long enough to see that systematic, explicit, evidence-informed literacy instruction boosts your great-grandchildren’s success and enjoyment of reading, and that any child you know who struggles immediately gets the kind of excellent, evidence-informed, school-based intervention that someday puts me out of business. Then I’ll retire, too. Best wishes, Alison Clarke.