One of the first modern national education methods to use the native Welsh language was started by Griffith Jones in 1731.
Magnuson's (1985) research revealed a trend: signature rates for the period of 1680–1699 were 42% for males, 30% for females; in 1657–1715, they were 45% for males and 43% for females; in 1745–1754, they were higher for females than for males.
The 1686 church law (kyrkolagen) of the Kingdom of Sweden (which at the time included all of modern Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Estonia) enforced literacy on the people, and by 1800 the ability to read was close to 100%.
Granted the power to organize parish schooling through the Vestry School Act of 1824, the Catholic clergy did nothing effective. Despite this, the invention of the printing press had laid the foundation for the modern era and universal social literacy, and so it is that with time, "technologically, literacy had passed from the hands of an elite to the populace at large.
A senior government official told Parliament in 1870: Upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends are industrial prosperity.
By 1900 the situation had improved somewhat, but 44% of black people remained illiterate.
Much of this theory's development is credited to English archeologist Flinders Petrie, who, in 1905, came across a series of Canaanite inscriptions located in the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadem.
This included a series of inscriptions from Ugarit, discovered in 1929 by French archaeologist Claude F.
The free education system established in 1945, is a result of the initiative of C.
In this view, illiteracy would be considered to be the inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the term “literacy” can be historically divided into the period before 1950, when literacy was understood solely as alphabetical literacy (word and letter recognition) and the period after 1950, when literacy slowly began to be considered as a wider concept and process, i.e., functional literacy (Dijanošić, 2009).
However, for four decades, the population growth was so rapid that the number of illiterate adults kept increasing, rising from 700 million in 1950 to 878 million in 1990.
Since then, the number has fallen markedly to 745 million in 2015, although it remains higher than in 1950 despite decades of universal education policies, literacy interventions and the spread of print material and information and communications technology (ICT).
Some of these inscriptions were mythological texts (written in an early Canaanite dialect) that consisted of a 32-letter cuneiform consonantal alphabet. Another significant discovery was made in 1953 when three arrowheads were uncovered, each containing identical Canaanite inscriptions from twelfth century BCE.
But educators broke from these spheres of influence and also taught literature from a more child-centred perspective: for the pleasure of it. Educational change in Québec began as a result of a major commission of inquiry at the start of what came to be called the "Quiet Revolution" in the early 1960s.
In the 1960s, because the majority of the residents of the federal capital were illiterate, the planners of the Mexico City Metro designed a system of unique icons to identify each station in the system in addition to its formal name.
The organization also provides volunteer-run conversation groups for English practice. ===South America=== In 1964 in Brazil, Paulo Freire was arrested and exiled for teaching peasants to read.
This disparity was even starker in previous decades: from 1970 to 2000, the global gender gap in literacy would decrease by roughly 50%.
In the 1970s, organizations like the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE) believed that one had to complete the 8th grade to achieve functional literacy.
However, the INEGI's census data of 1970 showed a national average illiteracy rate of 25.8%; the last census data puts the national average at 6.9%.
The government did not begin actively attempting to improve the literacy rate until 1971 when it gave the responsibility to Department for Vocational Training at the Secretariat for Youth and Sports.
Examination of 1976 census data, for example, found that 4,376,655, or 28.4% of Canadians 15 years of age and over reported a level of schooling of less than grade 9 and were thus deemed not functionally literate.
The programs need qualified female trainers, which is a major problem because most men refuse to send female family members to be trained under male teachers. ====Mauritius==== Free education in Mauritius did not proceed beyond the primary level until 1976, so many women now in their 50s or older left school at age 12.
National literacy campaign introduced in 1978 increased literacy rates to between 37% (unofficial) and 63% (official) by 1984. ====Guinea==== Guinea has a literacy rate of 41%.
The gap in illiteracy between white and black adults continued to narrow through the 20th century, and in 1979 the rates were about the same. Full prose proficiency, as measured by the ability to process complex and challenging material such as would be encountered in everyday life, is achieved by about 13% of the general, 17% of the white, and 2% of the African American population.
National literacy campaign introduced in 1978 increased literacy rates to between 37% (unofficial) and 63% (official) by 1984. ====Guinea==== Guinea has a literacy rate of 41%.
Statistics Canada then conducted three national and international literacy surveys of the adult population — the first one in 1989 commissioned by the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) department. This first survey was called the "Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities" (LSUDA) survey, and was modeled on the 1985 U.S.
Since 1986, the Hillsborough Literacy Council is "committed to improving literacy by empowering adults through education".
This department and subsequent following departments had no clear policy on literacy until the Department of Literacy and Basic Education was formed in 1986.
This dissatisfaction manifested itself in the development of actual proficiency tests that measure reading literacy more directly. =====Direct systematic measures of literacy in Canada, 1987 to present===== Canada conducted its first literacy survey in 1987 which discovered that there were more than five million functionally illiterate adults in Canada, or 24 per cent of the adult population.
Statistics Canada then conducted three national and international literacy surveys of the adult population — the first one in 1989 commissioned by the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) department. This first survey was called the "Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities" (LSUDA) survey, and was modeled on the 1985 U.S.
Reading and writing, therefore, are never separable from social and cultural elements. __TOC__ ==Other definitions and uses of the term "literacy"== The diversity among the definitions of literacy used by NGOs, think tanks, and advocacy groups since the 1990s suggests that this shift in understanding from "discrete skill" to "social practice" is both ongoing and uneven.
However, for four decades, the population growth was so rapid that the number of illiterate adults kept increasing, rising from 700 million in 1950 to 878 million in 1990.
However, the gap between men and women would narrow from 1990 onwards, after the increase of male adult literacy rates at 80 per cent (see image). Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the lowest overall literacy rates, also features the widest gender gap: just 52% of adult females are literate, and 68% among adult men.
Similar gender disparity persists in two other regions, North Africa (86% adult male literacy, 70% adult female literacy) and South Asia (77% adult male literacy, 58% adult female literacy). The 1990 World Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien, Thailand, would bring attention to the literacy gender gap and prompt many developing countries to prioritize women's literacy. In many contexts, female illiteracy co-exists with other aspects of gender inequality.
But in 1991, UNESCO formally acknowledged Canada's findings that assessment of educational attainment as proxy measure of literacy was not as reliable as was direct assessment.
Parents, caregivers, and educators can even start a book club. ======READ/Orange County====== This community literacy program was initiated in 1992 by the Orange County Public Library in California.
The survey found that 16% of Canadians had literacy skills too limited to deal with most of the printed material encountered in daily life whereas 22% were considered "narrow" readers. In 1994–95, Canada participated in the first multi-country, multi-language assessment of adult literacy, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS).
93% of children enter primary school today, compared with 87% in 1994. ====Eritrea==== According to the Ministry of Information of Eritrea, the nation has an estimated literacy rate of 80%. ====Ethiopia==== The Ethiopians are among the first literate people in the world, having written, read, and created manuscripts in their ancient language of Ge'ez (Amharic) since the second century CE.
As supported by the 1996 Report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, and the 1997 Hamburg Declaration: ‘Literacy, broadly conceived as the basic knowledge and skills needed by all in a rapidly changing world, is a fundamental human right.
As supported by the 1996 Report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, and the 1997 Hamburg Declaration: ‘Literacy, broadly conceived as the basic knowledge and skills needed by all in a rapidly changing world, is a fundamental human right.
The LCRP worked within refugee camps near the border of Sierra Leone, however this project only lasted from 1999 to 2001.
This disparity was even starker in previous decades: from 1970 to 2000, the global gender gap in literacy would decrease by roughly 50%.
"the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context". The expression "reading literacy" is used by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) that has monitored international trends in reading achievement at the fourth grade since 2001. Other organizations might include numeracy skills and technology skills separately but alongside of literacy skills.
The LCRP worked within refugee camps near the border of Sierra Leone, however this project only lasted from 1999 to 2001.
Some of the definitions below remain fairly closely aligned with the traditional "ability to read and write" connotation, whereas others take a broader view: The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (USA) included "quantitative literacy" (numeracy) in its treatment of literacy.
The Norwegian Refugee Council Pack program has been used in 13 post-conflict countries since 2003.
The survey presented many important correlations, among which was a strong plausible link between literacy and a country's economic potential. In 2003, Canada participated in the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL).
However 86% of the general population had basic or higher prose proficiency as of 2003, with a decrease distributed across all groups in the full proficiency group vs.
Participating children show marked improvement in their reading and writing skills throughout the semester. ======Hillsborough Literacy Council (HLC)====== Approximately 120,000 adults in Hillsborough County are illiterate or read below the fourth-grade level; According to 2003 Census statistics, 15 percent of Hillsborough County residents age 16 and older lacked basic prose literacy skills.
Literate Pakistan Foundation, a non-profit organization, which was established in 2003, is a case study, which brings to light the solutions for removing this menace from its roots.
The registered literacy rate in Libya was 86.1% in 2004 and UNESCO says that literacy rate in the region of Equatorial Guinea is approximately 95%, while the literacy rate is in South Sudan is approximately (27%).
The release of the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) report in 2005 revealed that approximately 14% of U.S.
While globalization presents emerging challenges, it also provides new opportunities: many education and development specialists are hopeful that new ICTs will have the potential to expand literacy learning opportunities for children and adults, even those in countries that have historically struggled to improve literacy rates through more conventional means. In 2007, the nonprofit organization LitWorld was founded to promote literacy around the world.
Although some researchers have concluded that signature counts drawn from marriage registers in nineteenth century France corresponded closely with literacy tests given to military conscripts, others regard this methodology as a "relatively unimaginative treatment of the complex practices and events that might be described as literacy" (Curtis, 2007, p. 1-2).
The government recognized the slow progress in literacy rates and began created ministries for basic education and literacy for their national languages in 2007.
To also improve literacy the government planned to increase its education budget by 3%, when this was purposed it was at 35% in 2007.
A 2008 analysis of the issue in Bangladesh found that for every additional year of delay in a girl's marriage, her likelihood of literacy would increase by 5.6 percent.
In January 2008, the government began offering a restricted program of free secondary education.
In this view, illiteracy would be considered to be the inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the term “literacy” can be historically divided into the period before 1950, when literacy was understood solely as alphabetical literacy (word and letter recognition) and the period after 1950, when literacy slowly began to be considered as a wider concept and process, i.e., functional literacy (Dijanošić, 2009).
In 2009, the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) in Ireland commissioned a cost benefit analysis of adult literacy training.
In 2010, however, the UNDP replaced the adult literacy measure with mean years of schooling.
Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, the states with the highest poverty rate, had greater than 15% illiteracy in 2010 (17.8%, 16.7% and 16.3 respectively).
/ Mexico City) and in some northern states like Nuevo León, Baja California, and Coahuila were below 3% in the 2010 census (2.1%, 2.2%, 2.6% and 2.6% respectively). ====United States==== Before the 20th century white illiteracy was not uncommon and many of the slave states made it illegal to teach slaves to read.
But education initiatives and programs have increased overall—according to the 2010 census, 86 percent of the overall population of Native Americans and Alaska Natives have high school diplomas, and 28 percent have a bachelor's degree or higher. ===== U.S.
As a result, the number of illiterate adults has risen by 27% over the last 20 years, reaching 169 million in 2010.
Thus, out of the 775 million illiterate adults in the world in 2010, more than one fifth were in sub- Saharan Africa – in other words, 20% of the adult population.
The adult literacy rate in 2010 was estimated at 72%. Education is compulsory from ages 6 to 15 and free for all children to attend.
Most Mauritian children, even at primary level, attend tuition after school and at weekends to cope with the highly competitive public school system where admission to prestigious public colleges (secondary) and most sought after university courses depend on merit based academic performance. The adult literacy rate was estimated at 89.8% in 2011.
both write and read with understanding in any language." According to the 2011 census, 74.04 percent. ====Laos==== Laos has the lowest level of adult literacy in all of Southeast Asia other than East Timor. Obstacles to literacy vary by country and culture as writing systems, quality of education, availability of written material, competition from other sources (television, video games, cell phones, and family work obligations), and culture all influence literacy levels.
It is one of the few countries in the world that provide universal free education from primary to tertiary stage. ===Oceania=== ====Australia==== Approximately 56% of Australians aged 15 to 74 achieve Level 3 literacy or above Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011–2012 and 83% of five-year-olds are on track to develop good language and cognitive skills Australian Early Development Census 2012 summary report.
The three-cueing system is used to determine the meaning of words by using grapho-phonetic cues (letter-sound relationships), syntactic cues (grammatical structure), and semantic cues (a word making sense in context). In a 2012 hypothesis, it has been proposed that reading might be acquired naturally if print is constantly available at an early age in the same manner as spoken language.
The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning has provided technical support to the Government of Afghanistan since 2012 with the aim of improving the literacy skills of an estimated 1.2 million people. To improve the literacy rate, U.S.
It is one of the few countries in the world that provide universal free education from primary to tertiary stage. ===Oceania=== ====Australia==== Approximately 56% of Australians aged 15 to 74 achieve Level 3 literacy or above Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011–2012 and 83% of five-year-olds are on track to develop good language and cognitive skills Australian Early Development Census 2012 summary report.
Illiteracy persists to a greater extent in other regions: 2013 UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data indicates adult literacy rates of only 67.55% in South Asia and North Africa, 59.76% in Sub-Saharan Africa. In much of the world, high youth literacy rates suggest that illiteracy will become less and less common as younger generations with higher educational attainment levels replace older ones.
According to 2013 UIS data, the youth literacy rate (individuals ages 15 to 24) is 84.03% in South Asia and North Africa, and 70.06% in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Efforts to increase adult literacy often encompass other development priorities as well; for example, initiatives in Ethiopia, Morocco, and India have combined adult literacy programs with vocational skills trainings in order to encourage enrollment and address the complex needs of women and other marginalized groups who lack economic opportunity. In 2013, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning published a set of case studies on programs that successfully improved female literacy rates.
Energy production:36%, transportation: 24%, homes and businesses: 12%, industry: 11%, agriculture: 10%, and waste: 7%. The OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is expected to produce new comparative skill profiles in late 2013. ====Mexico==== In the last 40 years, the rate of illiteracy in Mexico has been steadily decreasing.
A 2013 FSNAU survey indicates considerable differences per region, with the autonomous northeastern Puntland region having the highest registered literacy rate at 72%. ====Sierra Leone==== The Sierra Leone government defines literacy as anyone over the age of 15 who can read and write in English, Mende, Temne, or Arabic.
Similarly, a 2014 study found that in sub-Saharan Africa, marrying early would significantly decrease a girl's probability of literacy, holding other variables constant.
Public health research has thus increasingly concerned itself with the potential for literacy skills to allow women to more successfully access health care systems, and thereby facilitate gains in child health. For example, a 2014 descriptive research survey project correlates literacy levels with the socioeconomic status of women in Oyo State, Nigeria.
Since then, the number has fallen markedly to 745 million in 2015, although it remains higher than in 1950 despite decades of universal education policies, literacy interventions and the spread of print material and information and communications technology (ICT).
The global initiative of the United Nations to actualize the Sustainable Development Goal 4 is also gaining momentum. === Gender disparities === According to 2015 UIS data collected by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, about two-thirds (63%) of the world's illiterate adults are women.
Generational dynamics can also perpetuate these disparities: illiterate parents may not readily appreciate the value of literacy for their daughters, particularly in traditional, rural societies with expectations that girls will remain at home. A 2015 World Bank and the International Center for Research on Women review of academic literature would conclude that child marriage, which predominantly impacts girls, tends to reduce literacy levels.
A 2015 review of the child marriage literature therefore would recommend marriage postponement as part of a strategy to increase educational attainment levels, including female literacy in particular. ==== Gender gap for boys in developed countries ==== While women and girls comprise the majority of the global illiterate population, in many developed countries a literacy gender gap exists in the opposite direction.
In 2015, the adult literacy rate was 33%.
Literacy is also a catalyst for participation in social, cultural, political and economic activities, and for learning throughout life’. In 2016, the European Literacy Policy Network (ELINET) (an association of European literacy professionals) published a document entitled European Declaration of the right to literacy.
A series of pilot projects had been carried out in the Middle East and Africa (see Patil, 2016).
However, since 2016, the country has made significant progress.
While in 2016/17 the literacy rate was at 34.8%, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics recently confirmed that it has increased to 43%.
in all media (print or electronic), including digital literacy". In 2018, UNESCO includes "printed and written materials" and "varying contexts" in its definition of literacy; e.g.
"the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts". In 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its PIAAC adult skills surveys, includes "written texts" in its definition of literacy; e.g.
As of 2020, over 10 million youth and adults in Afghanistan are illiterate.
And, it treats numeracy and problem solving using technology as separate considerations. In 2021, Education Scotland and the National Literacy Trust in the UK included oral communication skills (listening and speaking) under the umbrella of literacy. As of 2021, the International Literacy Association (Newark, Delaware, USA) includes "audible materials", "across disciplines" and "in any context" in its definition of literacy; e.g.
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