How would you feel if you were a football coach and half your players didn’t understand the rules? Not only that, but half of them fail at tackling, kicking and receiving the ball. Would your games seem like a lost cause?
Welcome to the playing field of Australian literacy.
We live in a “lucky” country where 46% of Australians DO NOT have the level of literacy required to cope with everyday life. 46%! Nearly half of our countrymen cannot read and comprehend at the level necessary to successfully navigate everyday work requirements. That’s before we look at numeracy, where 53% of people are failing to make the grade.
I am appalled and shocked beyond belief. Despite the fact that Australia is supposed to value a fair go and give everyone a chance at making something of their life, it’s pretty clear this isn’t the case. An education system (or systems) that fails to close the literacy gap is directly contributing to keeping a large slice of Australians downtrodden, poor and unemployable. The ABS found that scores in prose literacy alone were reflected in a large gap in median weekly income:
Highest Levels of prose literacy = $890/week
Lowest Levels of prose literacy = $298/week
If you told kids at school that excellent reading was valued at $592/week for the rest of their lives, would you see an improvement? How about if you told their parents, carers and families? By these calculations, failure to achieve literacy costs the individual $1.2million in a working lifetime of just 40 years. (That’s $592/wk x 52wk/yr x 40yrs = $ 1 231 360 for those numerate types playing at home.)
If illiteracy costs that much to individuals, consider what it costs companies and businesses struggling to find employees. The Australian had a great article on this topic earlier this year – Forging New Strategies to tackle Workplace Illiteracy
In brief, what Heather reports is that:
- 75% employers report being affected by low literacy/numeracy
- 4 million workforce members can’t confidently use typical workplace documents
- no improvement in workforce literacy in 10 years
- poor spelling and grammar wastes time and money
- jobs where low literacy/numeracy levels can get by are disappearing
I for one can’t comprehend why students are allowed to leave school without the basics. Repeating until you achieve seems to have become a thing of the past and no-one knows why. We all hear “they need to stay with their friends – it’s bad for self esteem to be kept down” but I’m pretty sure being illiterate isn’t great for your self-esteem either. Some fingers are pointed at governments, claiming that students are moved on to keep costs down – a student who repeats costs more. I’m pretty sure that if you looked at it long term, the cost comparisons between literate and illiterate students would come out in favour of repeating. A year or two extra at school vs many years on unemployment benefits? I don’t think you have to be super-numerate to figure that one out.
If Australia wants to be a world leader in the economic game then we’d better start teaching our students to read and write properly. Or else, like so many European soccer clubs, we’ll have to start importing star players from overseas.
PS.
Australian Bureau of Statics – Australia’s Literacy and Life Skills 2006
PPS.
Act Now – the who, what, when and where of illiteracy
