By Zellyne Jennings-Craig, Contributor
The more highly educated the parents, the better the literacy and numeracy skills of the child.
IN EUROPE and North America more systematic means are being used to measure literacy levels. When Statistics Canada conducted an International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) during the 1990s, literacy skills were tested in three domains prose, document and quantitative, the latter referring to knowledge and skills required to apply arithmetic operations to numbers embedded in printed materials (e.g. completing an order form). Five levels of literacy were also tested, ranging from level 1 which indicates adults with very poor skills, to levels 4 and 5 where adults can demonstrate command of higher order information processing skills.
In the 'Skills for Life' survey in the United Kingdom in 2002-2003 researchers developed a framework of national standards for literacy. It included five levels of skills ranging from entry level 1 where the adult can understand short texts with repeated language patterns on familiar topics and can obtain information from common signs and symbols to level two and beyond where the adult understands a range of texts of varying complexity accurately and independently and can obtain information of varying length and detail from different sources. A parallel five broad levels of competence was also developed for numeracy and for skills in information and communication technology (ICT). Some points of interest in the UK study are:
(i) 84 per cent of the adult population have literacy skills at the highest level (level 1 and above)
(ii) adults tend to perform at a lower level in numeracy than in literacy.
(iii) men and women have similar levels of literacy but men have higher levels of numeracy :
(iv) the more highly educated the parents the better the literacy and numeracy skills of the child.
What is also apparent from the UK study is that a measurement of literacy recognises that each adult has different experiences and hence different levels of skills. While an adult may be described overall as at level 1 in literacy, he or she may have higher or lower levels of ability in different aspects of that skill.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from the IALS study. Adults of a particular age group could achieve highly in prose literacy, moderately in document literacy and quite low in quantitative literacy. This would give policy makers clearer guidelines on targets to be set. They could determine the percentage of a particular age group that should reach a set level in a particular domain of literacy by a given time. Do our literacy surveys give our policy makers as useful guidelines for future action?
THE JAMAICA ADULT
LITERACY SURVEY
Certainly the latest literacy survey (1999) gives far more useful information than those in the past. The surveys conducted prior to 1974 were self-reported data on literacy collected in the national population census. This explains the decrease in percentage noted in adult literacy between 1987 and 1994 (see Table 1). In fact, 1994 was the first year that a reading test was designed and used for the first time and in 1999 a literacy/numeracy test was used. We need to bear these differences in criterion measure in mind when making comparisons in literacy rates from year to year.
Also worthy of note is the fact that the 1999 survey tested functional literacy which incorporated skills in literacy and numeracy. A functionally literate person has been defined as 'one who can engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning of his group and community and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his own and for the community's development', a definition given by UNESCO in 1978. The 1999 survey (actually published in 2001) found that of the adult population of 1.5 million, 79.9 per cent was literate. Approximately 64.6 per cent attained functional literacy, while 15.3 per cent were considered to possess only basic literacy skills (i.e. were able to read at a low level and requiring assistance in performing certain tasks).
The illiterate accounted for 20.1 per cent of the population. The persons in this group were unable to recognise letters and numbers. Persons living in the rural areas had lower levels of literacy (73 per cent) than those in the Kingston and Metropolitan area (88.1 per cent) and other towns (84 per cent).
Females are more literate and numerate than males (see table 2); literacy rates are higher amongst those who attend school every day, especially the boys; the younger age group (15-24) are more literate (91.3 per cent) than the older age group (25-65) (76.2 per cent); and those children whose parents encouraged them to read, assisted them with homework and whom the children observed reading and writing were more literate than those who did not have such support. Hence the general conclusion of the JALS (1999) that "the person most prone to be illiterate is an older, rural male who dropped out of school early and received little parental assistance in the schooling process" (p 47).
So what do we infer from all of this? Clearly that adult literacy programmes need to target those living in the rural areas; that parental support is necessary not only to ensure regularity of attendance at school but also to model the kinds of behaviours that nurture the development of literacy skills. The findings also underscore the importance of seeing the development of functional literacy as a lifelong process. If young adults do not continue to develop their literacy skills after leaving school, such skills are likely to lapse, as is evident in the lower level of literacy amongst the older age group.
The development of literacy as an integral part of lifelong learning is essential given that the threshold of performance in literacy is constantly changing. There was a time, for example, when to function in society, achievement at Grade 6 in literacy was considered adequate, but some literacy specialists now maintain that a literacy level at a 12th grade reading level at least is needed to function in today's world.
The critical point is, given existing resources, what exactly would need to be done in adult literacy programmes to raise levels of achievement in literacy in Jamaica? Would it mean that more attention should be paid to developing skills to use information in various formats, e.g. job applications, payroll forms (document literacy)? Or should the ability to use information from texts (e.g. news stories, instruction manuals) (prose literacy) be targeted? And which age group should be targeted? Those over 25? Those living in rural areas?
The point is that although the JALS has provided more useful information over the years, the surveys still need to yield more specific information to inform decisions such as mentioned above. Future surveys also need to test skills in communicating through technology given that the 'new screens' (computers and screens on mobile phones) are now so much a part of everyday communication. But what use in fact is made of the data on our adult literacy rates?
In the Human Development Report (HDR) (UNDP 2004), Jamaica's adult literacy rate for 1990 is given as 82.2 per cent and for 2002 as 87.6 per cent.
Given the data in Table 1, how are these figures arrived at?
Jamaica furthermore is ranked number 79 in the Human Development Index and considered amongst those countries that have attained 'medium human development'.
This is below Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago and Antigua and Barbuda, ranked 29, 39, 54 and 55 respectively in the 'high human development' category and Suriname and St. Lucia also ranked in the medium human development category at number 67 and 71, respectively. But are these rankings arrived at based on the use of the same or similar measures of adult literacy?
Some countries use the percentage of children completing Grade 6 as the measure of adult literacy. Others have even used achievement at Grade 4 as the measure. The use of different measures of adult literacy within a country and between countries clearly makes cross-country comparisons problematic. It is also worth noting that despite the expressions of disappointment and despair over the generally low level of achievement of our students in mathematics and English at CXC, our youth literacy rate is given in the HDR as 91.2 per cent (1990) and 94.5 per cent (2002)!
The 1990 figure is quite close to the finding reported in JALS (1999) that the literacy rate of our youth (age 15-24) is 91.3 per cent compared to 76.2 per cent of the older age group (i.e. those over 25). Clearly this suggests that our young people, whether in or out of school are highly literate. If this seems to you as incredible as it does to me, then surely something is wrong with the yardstick that is used to measure literacy. Interestingly, in the HDR no adult literacy rate is reported for 19 countries in the 'high human development' category. These include Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the UK. These are amongst the countries that took part in the IALS study referred to earlier. They have abandoned the measures that are used to determine literacy rates in less developed countries like ours and now rely on data which inform specific action to be taken to raise adult literacy rates thereby sustaining their productivity.
Professor Zellynne Jennings-Craig is head of the Department of Educational Studies and Director of the School of Education at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
