What is literacy?

Literacy is crucial to the success of individuals in both their career aspirations and their quality of life.
It is more than a basic reading ability, but rather an indication of how adults use written information to
function in society.
Strong literacy skills are closely linked to the probability of having a good job, decent earnings, and
access to training opportunities. Individuals with weak literacy skills are more likely to be unemployed
or, if employed, tend to be in jobs that pay little or that offer poor hours or working conditions.
Traditionally, literacy has referred to the ability to read, understand, and use information. But the term
has come to take on broader meaning, standing for a range of knowledge, skills and abilities relating
to reading, mathematics, science and more. This reflects widespread and deep changes that have
taken place in technology and in the organization of work over the past quarter century. The ability to
use and apply key mathematics and science concepts is now necessary across a wide range of
occupations.
Why is literacy important?
Literacy is fundamental for learning in school. It has an impact on an individual's ability to participate
in society and to understand important public issues. And it provides the foundation upon which skills
needed in the labour market are built.
Technology, and the science behind it, permeates all aspects of our lives, from how we work and
communicate to what we shop for and how we pay our bills. The complexity of today's world means
that individuals need to have some level of proficiency in reading, mathematics and science in order to
understand and participate fully in economic and social life.
A population's literacy skills also have a bearing on how well a country performs economically. The
world we live in today is vastly different from that of a generation ago. Technological change has
transformed the way in which work is done; competition in many industries is global in nature; and the
industrial structure of the Canadian labour market has rapidly evolved from a manufacturing and
agricultural base to one based on services. These changes have, in turn, brought rising skill
requirements. Countries that are successful in endowing their populations with strong skills are usually
in a better position to meet the economic challenges of operating in a globalized information
economy.
Finally, having a population that has strong literacy skills also places a country in a better position to
meet the complex social challenges that it faces. For example, strong literacy skills are linked to better
health outcomes for individuals. A highly literate population will be better able to deal with issues of
governance in a highly diverse society. And informed debate is needed to help us determine how best
we can allocate scarce resources across competing priorities, such as education, health, investment
in infrastructure, and social programs.
Measuring student achievement:
A key indicator of educational progress is the extent to which schools are successful in equipping their
students with strong literacy skills. This indicator consists of two components. The first component
relates to how well students perform on average, with higher average scores indicating, at a national
or provincial level, stronger academic achievement overall. The second component concerns the
range in scores between the top-performing students and those at the bottom of the distribution.
Equity considerations suggest that a system that is able to achieve high scores through the strong
performance of all students, regardless of their backgrounds, would be preferable to one where a

strong average was the product of a small proportion of super achievers. There are efficiency reasons
for wanting to reduce the size of the gap between the top and the bottom as well-the evidence shows
that countries or provinces that have a narrower achievement gap also tend to have higher average
literacy scores than those where that gap is larger.
The role of socio-economic status:
Many factors affect the size of the achievement gap. One important factor is socio-economic status
(SES), which is typically measured based on parents education attainment, occupation, and/or
income. Numerous studies in many countries have found that there is a strong tendency for students
from families with higher SES to achieve higher scores than students from families with lower SES.
However, it is also the case that countries with high average reading achievement tend to have less
variability in scores across SES groups. The PISA results show that Canada had not only a smaller
gap in achievement between students from different backgrounds but also high scores across SES
groups. Germany, on the other hand, had the greatest gap in achievement when students with
different SES backgrounds were compared. Similar results were found for mathematics and science
achievement.
However, as we have seen, family SES does not have a fixed effect. Some jurisdictions have made
better progress in reducing the negative impact of low SES than others and individual schools vary in
their success in this regard. The evidence also suggests that parents who are interested in and
involved with their childrens education and who provide a home environment that stimulates learning
have a positive impact on their childrens outcomes, regardless of their SES.
Achieving both high average literacy scores and low inequality scores are desirable, and as we have
seen, compatible goals. Part of the policy equation is understanding and assessing which policies and
practices work best so that all students can benefit, regardless of where they live or how well off their
parents are.