English teens have worst literacy skills in developed world

TEENAGERS in England have the worst literacy skills in the developed world, a scathing report says.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development think-tank ranked English 16 to 19-year-olds the worst of 23 nations for literacy.

And they came second last in numeracy, with only the United States faring worse.

Around a third of 16 to 19-year-olds are still wrestling with the basics – three times as many as in countries such as Finland, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands.

And nine million working age adults – those aged 16 to 65 – in England have poor literacy or numeracy skills, or both.

The OECD said that improving standards in schools needs to be the ‘priority of priorities’. The think-tank also found that this is having a knock-on effect on graduates, with one in five still struggling with the basics. Graduates came sixth from bottom the OECD’s league tables for literacy and numeracy.

The OECD, which published its report yesterday, also blamed the huge surge in numbers going to university and the ‘expansion among less selective institutions’ such as former polytechnics for ‘lower entry standards and lower basic skills among graduates’. The OECD said institutions must either stop admitting students who are substandard or not let them graduate until they improve, warning that the ‘currency of an English university degree’ is being undermined.

It added that urgent action was needed from the Government and suggested penalties could be introduced for institutions that continue to admit substandard students.

The report also warned students with poor skills will struggle to earn enough to repay student loans, and that the cost to the economy of admitting such students, which it estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of pounds a year, is ‘impossible to justify’.

The findings came from the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills, which tested 166,000 people aged 16 to 65 on numeracy and literacy in 22 of the 34 member countries of the OECD – which covers developed and emerging nations including the US, France, Germany, Japan and Korea. The survey also included two ‘partner’ countries – Cyprus and Russia.

Some 11,000 graduates from all 24 countries were quizzed, including 400 from England – who came sixth from bottom.

The report said: ‘Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks.’

Some 27.8 per cent of graduates in England aged 20 to 34 only managed to reach ‘level two or below’ in numeracy and 19.9 per cent in literacy, meaning they could not do simple tasks such as working out the percentage of a discount or collating information from different sources.

The OECD averages were 21.1 per cent for numeracy and 14.8 per cent for literacy.

Worryingly, 6.5 per cent in England had maths skills at ‘level one and below’, meaning they could not do simple addition and subtraction, and 3.4 per cent had such poor literacy skills that ‘more often than not’ they could not understand aspirin instructions or estimate how much petrol was left in a car’s tank.

The OECD also said ministers’ recent decision to remove a cap on the number of students universities can enrol could worsen the problem. The Government expects to fund 60,000 more full-time undergraduate places each year.

‘Struggle with more challenging tasks’