In order to improve literacy outcomes across the board, it is important that a concerted effort be made to reduce inequalities in the outcomes of schooling between children from different social groups. Many IALS respondents whose scores were at the lowest literacy level were receiving some form of social assistance. A primary link between literacy and socio-economic status is the effect of segregating low-status groups from mainstream society. Ethnic minorities, people with low incomes and the unemployed are segregated by their place of residence in most of the world's cities. This segregation limits access to certain labor markets and to the best schools for all children. The effects of residential segregation can be either reduced or exacerbated by government policy and workplace practices that determine where educational and training programs are located, and who has access to them. Employers, policy-makers, educators, and other community leaders need to become aware of those structural features of the education system and labor market that lead to steep skill differences between social groups, and take steps to ensure that children and workers from differing backgrounds have equal opportunities for high-quality schooling and training. They also need to ensure that there are a number of different avenues for youth and adults to recover from inadequate educational experiences.
In economically advanced countries participation in adult education and training has become a common activity. Yet the IALS data show that in each country surveyed there are large groups outside the learning society. Judged by their literacy scores, those outside are often those most in need of skill enhancement. Yet rates of participation in adult education increase consistently by increasing levels of literacy: those with low skills receive the least adult education. The fact that adult education has become strongly tied to the world of work poses the risk that certain social groups are systematically excluded. Not everybody is in the labour force. Moreover, because job status is linked with educational attainment and opportunities to learn, workers in blue-collar occupations receive far less training compared with workers in white-collar occupations. The likelihood of receiving employer support for training is also directly related to both the level of education and occupational category. In short, those who already have a good initial education and adequate literacy skills are those who benefit most from available learning opportunities. A sound strategy for improving literacy outcomes in North America would seek to employ means to ensure that those with poor skills receive a larger share of the available adult education resources than they do at present.
Literacy skill profiles and indicators of the world of work are related in complex ways. Because literacy is required by many jobs, high literacy skills are likely to lead to better employment prospects. At the same time, the workplace is a factor in literacy acquisition and maintenance, a place where a considerable amount of reading, writing and arithmetic takes place. Often these two aspects of workplace literacy reinforce each other: Skills learned in schools facilitate engaging more frequently in more complex activities at the workplace that in turn build skills. The IALS survey results confirm this dual role of workplace literacy.