Canada’s Literacy and Numeracy Challenge Worsens

Canada has an essential skills problem, and the latest international benchmark survey demonstrates this reality. Recently, the OECD released the results from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey. The survey is a large scale assessment of essential skills of adults aged 16-65 in 24 countries and sub-regions1. The release marks an almost 10-year wait since the previous survey in 20032. Educators and policymakers were eagerly anticipating the results to see how Canada fared against other countries and previous surveys. Canada’s results in literacy and numeracy were depressing. Although Canada has a modern knowledgebased economy, with well developed provincial primary and secondary education systems, Canada’s score in literacy was only the average of other industrialized countries. While this is a mediocre result, the more depressing development is that the 2012 performance was lower than when compared to the 2003 results (see Chart 1)3. Canada’s numeracy results were even worse, as they also fell back from their 2003 showing, and came in below the average score across other advance countries in 2012. There was one area, however, where Canada did outperform. This year there was a new assessment regarding problem solving in a technology-rich environment. Canada recorded a larger share of its population at the highest levels proficiency in this category compared with the OECD average. In order for Canada to remain competitive in the global economy, it is imperative that the Canadian workforce has the necessary skills – both today and tomorrow. Our recent report Jobs in Canada highlighted that although there is some evidence of a skills mismatch in Canada across certain occupations and regions, there is no widespread skills shortage as had widely been believed. That said, one still deeply worries about having only average or below average results in core skills like literacy and numeracy and the implications for Canada’s future workforce. Indeed, without getting the basics right, CANADA’S LITERACY AND NUMERACY CHALLENGE WORSENS