Among those at the same level of educational attainment, there are large differences in literacy performance between immigrants and the Canadian-born. About two percent of the university-educated Canadian-born score at Level 1 prose literacy proficiency. In comparison, 14 percent of university-educated established immigrants and 18 percent of recent immigrants score at this level. At the other end of the scale, 37 percent of university-educated Canadian-born compared to 21 percent of university-educated established immigrants and 11 percent of university-educated recent immigrants score at Levels 4/5 (See Annex A Table 3.28).
Comparing those who are at the lowest level of prose literacy (Level 1), the Canadian-born and the established immigrants have lower educational attainment than the recent immigrants. At Level 1 proficiency, 59 percent of the Canadianborn, 46 percent of established immigrants and 26 percent of recent immigrants have less than upper secondary education. Given the higher educational attainment of recent immigrants, it is possible that many of them have higher literacy proficiency in their mother tongue. More research is needed to determine the extent to which low literacy scores of recent immigrants reflect a lack of proficiency in English or French, rather than low literacy in their mother tongue.
This chapter has examined the literacy performance of groups of special interest to Canadians, including linguistic minorities, Aboriginal populations and immigrants. A wealth of data and analytical results are presented for each population group. These results should be considered exploratory, since many questions remain unanswered while new issues are also raised.
The findings indicate that literacy proficiency is not equally distributed across various groups in Canada. In each of the four provinces where significant proportions of the population speak both official languages, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, the proportion of Francophones that score below Level 3 prose literacy proficiency is higher than the proportion of Anglophones.
In part a reflection of differing levels of formal education and use of a mother tongue other than English or French, the literacy performance of the Aboriginal and immigrant populations surveyed is lower than that of the total Canadian population.
Equal opportunities and equitable outcomes remain important goals in Canada. The IALSS provides important data for further research to assess the extent to which the observed differences in measured literacy, numeracy and problem solving proficiency among particular groups lead to different economic and social outcomes.