LITERACY I N THE IK

LITERACY IN THE UK is of course what I meant to type

I think it's due to many things. It surely doesn't help that so many children have their own TVs and playstations now. Plus I have nagging doubts about the modern methods of teaching reading. I learnt by the "Phonics" method and my sister learnt mostly by the "Real Books" method. I was able to read much sooner than she was and I don't believe there is any real difference in our abilities. Also, I did some work experience at my old primary school for a sixth form course and was taken aback when the six-year-olds I read with not only couldn't read at all, but didn't know the alphabet. I wondered what they had actually learned in their first year of school. It seemed so different from my time there, when the more able children had reading ages far above their own, and the less able had one-to-one tuition which brought their reading ages up to their chronological age. I remember thinking at the time that the reading ages were far too generous. Since then, I've heard calls to bring back phonics, so maybe my suspicions are correct.

Your bearing out my own theory. Not only does it seem that children today no longer learn the alphabet but can't even recite the mathematic times table, instead they whip out a calculator!

I also remember that when my sister was 6 years old, I asked her, "What does one add one make? You know, one plus one?" She didn't know. Saying that, I never learnt to multiply and divide on paper myself. I still can't do it in the form of a traditional sum. But I did learn to solve some quite complex maths problems with a calculator.

Over what period has the UK fallen from 3rd to 15th place? How many countries were surveyed - if all 200 or so countries in the world were included, 15th place is still pretty good. Did reading skills in the UK decline, or did reading skills in 12 countries improve so that they passed out the UK?

This article from The Guardian gives the UK's place as 19th but it provides some other information also

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-7111606,00.html

And this from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7117230.stm

The study was the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. The report is hard to wade through, because it primarily focusses on how US students compare to others.
>The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international comparative study of the reading literacy of young students. PIRLS studies the reading achievement and reading behaviors and attitudes of fourth-grade students {age is around 9 years} in the United States and students in the equivalent of fourth grade in other participating countries.

PIRLS was first administered in 2001 and included 35 countries, and was administered again in 2006 to students in 40 countries.

The countries are the US, 5 Canadian provinces, most of western Europe, some eastern Europe, Taipei, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Israel, South Africa & Morocco, Iceland, a couple of middle eastern countries, and a few others. Nothing else in Africa, nothing in South America. NZ but not Australia.

Reading literacy is
>the ability to understand and use those written language forms required by society and/or valued by the individual. Young readers can construct meaning from a variety of texts. They read to learn, to participate in communities of readers in school and everyday life, and for enjoyment.

The study is
>PIRLS consists of two main components: (1) a literacy assessment administered to sampled fourth-grade students and (2) background questionnaires administered to students, their teachers, and the administrators in the schools in which the sampled students were enrolled.

Each country, province or whatever implemented the study based on procedures given them. Each booklet had the same reading passages. "Students who participated in the assessment received a test booklet containing two passages and were asked to answer a series of multiple-choice and open-ended questions related to the passages."

Between 2001 & 2006, average scores increased in Germany; Hong Kong, SAR; Hungary; Italy; the Russian Federation; Singapore; the
Slovak Republic; and Slovenia. Scores decreased in England, Lithuania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Romania, and Sweden.

In 2006, in all but two jurisdictions (Luxembourg and Spain), average scores for girls on the combined reading literacy scale were higher than average scores for boys. Surprisingly (to me anyway) the score difference between genders was highest in Kuwait & Qatar. I would have expected more boys to be highly literate in those countries.

Since the OP is about the UK, I'll add (BTW, it's listed as "England" in the study)

average number of hours spent on reading instruction each week
In England, 67% of students got up to 3 hours. 8% got more than 6 hours
In the US, 68% got more than 8 hours. Eastern European countries also tended to have 50% or more of students getting 8 hours or more a week.

Percentage of students who read stories or novels, by frequency of reading outside of school:
England: 33% "Almost every day", 17% never
US 36% and 19%, respectively
Italy 12% and 43%, the Slovak REpublic was about the same.
Most Canadian provinces had over 50% who reported reading daily.

OK, so it was England (not the UK) that slipped from 5th to 19th; Scotland went from 14th to 26th (which the Guardian omits to mention, perhaps assuming that the Scots wouldn't be literate enough to read the Guardian).

The choice of geographical units is a little odd: 4 of the "countries" above England are actually provinces of Canada. I think that's why England's position is sometimes given as 19th and sometimes as 15th. Also, several of the countries above England did not participate in the 2001 survey, so the fall from 5 to 19 is a bit meaningless -especially when you consider the trivial difference between the England score and the group of countries just above them. Sweden and the Netherlands, the two highest-achieving countries in 2001, also fell sharply down the rankings. All in all it's quite hard to interpret the ranking data. Possibly the fall in the actual scored achieved is more revealing than the ranking change.

There is a lot more detail specifically about England in this report. They say that the drop in the English score was due mainly to lower achievement among higher-achieving children (i.e. the middle and lower didn't change much but the best are not as good as they used to be).

Edited by: alan1972