I have obtained a copy of the recent Sheffield University report on literacy and numeracy in Britain. It provides a bewildering array of statistics and the challenge is to work out which ones are reliable and which are not. The confidence placed in the consistency of the standards of the GCSE, for example, would not be shared by everyone.

In any case, I was struck by some of the comments. Here is one on a studies done by Massey and Elliott (1996) on writing looking at samples of age 16 English examination scripts from 1980 (GCE O-Level), 1993 and 1994 (GCSE), and later Massey et al. (2005) looking at GCSE scripts from 2004.

The results of the extended study showed that, while 1993 and 1994 were relatively poor years, the 2004 scripts had returned to the 1980 level (though not in spelling, where 1980 pupils were much better), and in some cases (e.g. punctuation) exceeded 1980. However, the use of non-standard English had increased through the years, and Massey et al. (2005) suggested that there was a case for an attempt to reverse this trend.

In other words, between 1980 and 2004, the report card would read:

1. Spelling - much worse
2. Punctuation - better
3. Use of non-standard English - worse.

Of course, this is only one assessment and for all I know it may be flawed (or it may not.

Here is a rather tantalising entry:

People at this level can handle only simple texts and straightforward questions on them where no distracting information is adjacent or nearby. Making inferences and understanding forms of indirect meaning (e.g. allusion, irony) are likely to be difficult or impossible. This is less than the functional literacy needed to partake fully in employment, family life and citizenship and to enjoy reading for its own sake. About 17% of young people in England are at this level. While this is lower than at some older ages in England, it is higher than in many other industrialised countries.

It is the final sentence that is intriguing. The authors are suggesting that the level of functional illiteracy in Britain is worse than in 'many other' industrialised countries. I have not read the full report with care as yet but I have not found the data which full describes this. I hope to discover more.

Incidentally, I seem to remember from previously looking at such studies that at least one PISA study did not get a full sample from Britain making the British outcome less than wholly reliable. It seemed quite possible that the PISA result flattered the British performance because lower-achieving schools were the ones which declined to take part.

I note that the Sheffield University study makes no attempt to separate out the performance of the private and the state sector. The PISA report that I once studied showed the the performance of the English private sector was the best in the world out of all countries and all sectors. This, inevitably, dragged up the overall level of the UK performance from what it would otherwise have been

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education

Comments (0) TrackBack (20)