OECD ADULT SKILLS SURVEY 2013!

"If there is one central message emerging from this new survey, it is that what people know and what they do with what they know has a major impact on their life chances.
The median hourly wage of workers who can make complex inferences and evaluate subtle truth claims or arguments in written texts is more than 60% higher than for workers who can, at best, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information. Those with low literacy skills are also more than twice as likely to be unemployed. The survey also shows that how literacy skills are distributed across a population has significant implications on how economic and social outcomes are distributed within the society. If large proportions of adults have low reading and numeracy skills, introducing and disseminating productivity-improving technologies and work-organisation practices can therefore be hampered. But the impact of skills goes far beyond earnings and employment. In all countries, individuals with lower proficiency in literacy are more likely than those with better literacy skills to report poor health, to believe that they have little impact on political processes, and not to participate in associative or volunteer activities. In most countries, they are also less likely to trust others." 

The worrying tables for us are the tables describing the literacy and numeracy scores for 16 - 25 year olds.

The challenge for us all is to rethink, re-imagine and re-engineer the curriculum we offer our children and young people to ensure that we close this gap and give our young people the skills they need to compete on a world stage.