As seen in chapter 2, literacy is a foundation for the acquisition of knowledge and skills over the life course and thus, literacy performance is positively related to educational attainment. This section looks at the relationship between literacy proficiency and educational attainment among the Aboriginal populations surveyed.
Overall, the positive relationship between literacy proficiency and educational attainment holds for Aboriginal populations. Those with the least education have the lowest average prose literacy scores. This relationship between higher levels of educational attainment and higher proficiency also holds for the other three domains assessed (See Annex A Table 3.12 B and D and Table 3.13 B and D).
In some of the jurisdictions surveyed, large differences in literacy performance between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations remain once education is accounted for while in others the difference is greatly reduced. This suggests that in some jurisdictions, differences in education levels may help to explain differences in the literacy performance of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations while in others, there are other factors at play.3
Figure 3.12 shows that there is little difference in the average prose literacy scores of urban Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons in Manitoba once education is taken into account. The average prose literacy score of urban Aboriginal people with more than high school education, for example, is 294 compared to 298 for non-Aboriginal people. In Saskatchewan, among the urban Aboriginal population, those with more than high school education have the highest average prose literacy score - corresponding to Level 3 proficiency. This average score, however, remains somewhat lower than that for the same group in the non-Aboriginal population. In the Yukon, the difference in prose literacy performance for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons is greatly reduced for those with more than high school education (Figure 3.13).
In the three territories, there are notable differences in prose literacy performance between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons with less than high school education. In the territories, the average score for the Aboriginal populations corresponds to Level 1 proficiency while the average score is at Level 2 for the non-Aboriginal populations.