The 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey showed that close to half of the Canadian adult population, aged 16 and over, performed below Level 3 on the prose literacy scale, the “desired level” of competence for coping with the increasing skill demands of the emerging knowledge and information economy (OECD and Statistics Canada, 1995). Among those 16 to 65 years of age, this represented about 8 million Canadians below Level 3 in 1994. This drew the attention of the media and the general public and served to raise the profile of adult literacy issues among governments, businesses and the wider community.
The expectation was that the next survey would show improvements to the literacy profile of Canadians given that a large proportion of those with low literacy in the older age groups would retire from the work force, more new immigrants would have university degrees, and a larger proportion of the Canadian-born population would graduate with postsecondary degrees.
Contrary to expectations, the results from the 2003 IALSS presented in this report do not show any marked improvement in the overall literacy performance of Canadian adults since 1994. In 2003, just under half of adults aged 16 and over and 42 percent of those aged 16 to 65, about 9 million, were below Level 3 in prose literacy. Among the provinces, with the exception of Quebec, where there was an increase in average prose literacy, and in the Atlantic region where there was an increase in document literacy, no changes were observed in the average literacy performance of adults 16 and over between 1994 and 2003.
There has been a modest shift away from the lowest and highest ends of literacy performance towards the middle. In other words, there appear to be fewer Canadians at the highest and lowest literacy levels in 2003 than in 1994 and more at Levels 2 and 3. Average proficiency for those 16 and over on the prose scale and the document scale is close to the desired threshold of literacy performance of Level 3 (at Level 3 for those 16 to 65 years of age) but the scores have not significantly improved during the past decade.
Understanding why the expected improvement in literacy performance did not occur is clearly important but the answers are not simple. As anticipated, there has been some improvement in the literacy performance of those in the older age groups. While the group born between 1928 and 1937, who were 57 to 66 years of age in 1994, had an average prose literacy score of 233 points, those who are currently in that age group have an average score of 258 points.