Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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CHAPTER 2
Box 2.19: Rich countries — poor literacy
Education for All Global Monitoring Report
The world is far
off track for the
2015 target of
achieving a 50%
improvement
in levels of
adult literacy
This section focuses on illiteracy in poor countries,
but rich countries also have significant pockets of
deprivation. Many adults lack the functional literacy
skills they need to apply for jobs, read newspapers
or understand documents — on housing, health
and the education of children, for example —
that affect their lives:
In France, an estimated 9% of people aged 18
to 65 lack the basic reading, writing, arithmetic
and other fundamental skills required for simple
everyday situations.
In the Netherlands, 1.5 million adults (including
1 million native Dutch speakers) are classified as
functionally illiterate, implying that they are not
equipped to process basic information.
In the United States, 14% of the population lacks
the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday
tasks like understanding newspaper articles and
instruction manuals. Around 12% lack the literacy
In Afghanistan, 87% of adult women and 57%
of men were illiterate in 2000.
In Chad, Ethiopia and Mali, women are around
1.5 times as likely as men to be illiterate.
In Algeria and Yemen, the illiteracy rates for
females are more than twice those for men.
Contrary to common understanding, the
relationship between average income and literacy
is highly variable. For example, Egypt’s average
income is comparable to that of Ecuador, but its
literacy rate is 66% while Ecuador’s is 84%.
Similarly, Algeria has a far higher level of average
income than Bolivia but a lower adult literacy rate.
In both cases, gender disparities explain much of
the discrepancy (see annex, Statistical Table 2).
The contrasting profiles for national literacy point
to distinctive policy challenges. As well as making
sure that young people emerge from education
systems with basic literacy skills, many countries
in sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia and
parts of the Arab world need to extend literacy
opportunities to a large share of the adult
population. In Brazil and Indonesia, where
illiteracy affects 10% or less of the adult population,
policy-makers still have to address the task of
reaching highly marginalized groups and people,
many of them in remote areas.
skills needed to fill out a job application or
understand labels on food and drugs. More than
one in five — 22% of the population — has
‘below basic’ quantitative skills, finding it impossible
to balance a chequebook or deduce from an
advertisement the amount of interest on a loan.
In England (United Kingdom), 1.7 million people
(5% of those aged 16 to 65) perform below the
level expected of 7-year-olds on the national
curriculum test, and 5.1 million perform below
the level expected of 11-year-olds.
Literacy problems in rich countries are often
concentrated in areas of acute social disadvantage,
among migrant groups and the poor. Illiteracy
is a factor in low pay, insecure employment
and social exclusion.
Sources: Burd-Sharps et al. (2008); National Agency to Fight
Illiteracy (2007); National Literacy Trust (2009); Reading and
Writing Foundation (2009).
Measuring literacy is not an exact science. National
estimates are typically derived from census and
household surveys in which people are asked to
report on their own literacy status (Box 2.20).
Because the idea of literacy is specific to different
cultures and contexts, the word itself can have
different meanings to different people (Fransman,
2005; UIS, 2008a). National surveys often fail to
generate representative data for populations that
are hard to reach or people living in informal
settlements (Aderinoye and Rogers, 2005). Given
that literacy levels are likely to be lower among
these groups this can also lead to underestimation
of the numbers of illiterates.
The progress report
The world is far off track for the 2015 target of
achieving a 50% improvement in levels of adult
literacy. In the absence of a concerted international
drive to prioritize literacy, there is little prospect
of the target being brought within reach. Yet the
experience of some countries, and of some
programmes within countries, demonstrates that
a great deal can be achieved in relatively little time.
Adult literacy rates in the developing world have
been rising with every school generation. As more
children enter school and leave with basic literacy
skills, literacy rates inevitably rise. Literacy
programmes have also played a positive role in
some countries. From 1985–1994 to 2000–2007,
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