Today’s OECD study of basic skills ranks England lowest in the developed world for literacy, and second lowest for numeracy. We knew that our schools might struggle to compete with the likes of Singapore and South Korea, but this puts the problem in a whole new perspective. It’s the delayed results of a study taken four years ago where 5,000 in each country were sampled so, to some extent, it’s a hangover from the days when a far greater share of children left school without five decent passes. But the report also found that England has three times more low-skilled people among those aged 16-19 than the best-performing countries like Finland, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands. One in ten of all English university graduates have low literacy and numeracy skills.
It does acknowledge that ‘England has in recent years adopted a wide-ranging set of measures to address the literacy and numeracy weaknesses of young adults at 16-19 and beyond’.
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