Page 985 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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LITERACY - INTERNATIONAL YEAR
Ministerial Statement
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts), by leave: Mr Speaker, I would like to report on progress made in the ACT during International Literacy Year last year. In 1966, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, declared 8 September each year to be International Literacy Day. This signalled a new awareness of literacy throughout the world. At first, the focus was on the underdeveloped nations of the world. The industrialised nations have only recently begun to understand the seriousness of the literacy problem amongst their own people. As a result of this changing attitude, the United Nations declared 1990 to be International Literacy Year - ILY, for short - and the beginning of a decade in which all nations should recognise and address the literacy needs of their people.
In 1989, the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training funded our first national survey of the adult population to gauge competence in literacy in English. Rosie Wickert's summary report on this survey, called No Single Measure, was released in late 1989. It introduced us to the concept of functional literacy defined as:
... using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.
In other words, Mr Speaker, literacy is not seen as a fixed set of skills to be learnt by everyone, but as different sets of skills demanded of people according to the specific needs of their specific contexts. It is this functional view of literacy which makes the findings of the Wickert study so disturbing and of such importance to Australian society. The study found that:
... a majority of Australian adults can perform straightforward literacy tasks, but many appear to be unable to complete tasks of moderate complexity.
An estimated one million adults do not have the requisite literacy skills to function adequately in an advanced technological society like Australia's.
These findings were surprising for two reasons. Firstly, the proportion of those with very low levels of literacy proficiency was much higher than is widely realised. At least 11 per cent of respondents could not perform the basic literacy tasks that had been set. Secondly, some literacy difficulties were experienced by a large proportion of respondents, even amongst those with high levels of education. Only 22 per cent of all respondents could complete all tasks correctly, and only 73 per cent of respondents with professional qualifications could carry
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