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The Daily

The Daily. Thursday, February 8, 2001

Benchmarking adult literacy in North America

1994 to 1998

Benchmarking adult literacy in North America: an international comparative study is available today. Published by Statistics Canada and Human Resources Development Canada and commissioned by the United States Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, this monograph presents 10 international indicators that allow readers to compare the literacy proficiency of North Americans with that of other populations.

The results show that Canadian adults are at an average level of literacy performance, behind the Nordic countries and the Netherlands but on par with adults in the United States, Australia, and Germany.

This overall result masks important variation in the distribution of literacy skill between Canada and the United States. In Canada, the literacy skill of adults in the bottom 25 percent of the population is slightly better than that observed in the United States, whereas the reverse is seen among adults in the top 25 percent of the population - American adults slightly outperform their Canadian peers.

The International Adult Literacy Survey was a 22-country initiative that provides objective measures of adult literacy skill in three domains: prose literacy, document literacy and quantitative literacy. These correspond to the following set of information processing skills needed to reliably perform everyday tasks at home, at work and in the community.

Prose literacy is the ability to understand and to use information from texts such as editorials, news stories, poems and fiction. Document literacy is the ability to find and use information from documents such as job applications, payroll forms, transportation schedules, maps, tables and graphs. Quantitative literacy is the ability to perform arithmetic functions such as balancing a chequebook, calculating a tip or completing an order form.

Benchmarking adult literacy in North America: An international comparative study (89-572-XPE, $10) is now available. See How to order products. The report (89-572-XIE, free) is available on Statistics Canada's Web site. From the Products and Services page, choose Free publications, then Education. The report is also available at Human Resources Development Canada's Web site (www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/arb).

For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact T. Scott Murray (613-951-9035; fax: 613-951-9040), Culture, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics.


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