Since 2012, nearly 450,000 Quebecers have learned to read and understand a complex text, according to a study by the Literacy Foundation published on Wednesday. This progress remains “relative”, because Quebec remains at the back of the pack in the country.
“Quebec is still the tenth province. We are always in the last”, sighs, in the light of this study, André Huberdeau, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Foundation.
The proportion of Quebecers who do not reach level 3 in literacy, in other words those with “acute” reading difficulties, would have increased from 53.2% in 2012 to 46.4% in 2022. Approximately 450,000 Quebecers therefore have progressed on this point in 10 years. The Canadian average was established in 2012 at 48.5%.
All the same, there are still 2.5 million Quebecers between the ages of 16 and 65 struggling with this form of functional illiteracy. They form the cohort of people likely to comment on an article online without having read its content, exemplifies the author of the study, the economist Pierre Langlois. “They will understand a certain amount of information in the text, obviously the title, but will drop out after a few paragraphs. They will have difficulty distinguishing between information and editorial. They can drink from erroneous sources of information. »
Quebec is still the tenth province. We are always at the bottom.
The best country in the world in this regard, Japan, obtains a score of 28%. The two countries tied for second place, Finland and the Netherlands, have illiteracy levels reaching 39%. The OECD average is 48%.
More graduates
More and more Quebecers are graduating from high school, the study notes. The “graduation rate” went from 75% for the 2005 cohort to 81.8% for the 2013 cohort.
Quebecers over the age of 65 were not counted in this study. Much of this progress is therefore attributable to the fact that the older—less educated—generations are falling out of the equation over the years.
André Huberdeau sees these “relative” gains as proof that the education system has improved over the years. “The great leap forward of the Parent Commission [sur l’enseignement] earns us literacy points over the years,” says Mr. Langlois.
One thing is certain, these reading deficiencies weigh on the profitability of Quebec companies.
It is that in the event of a change in a plant, without the possibility of understanding the subtleties, “one day or the next, you become an incompetent employee”, summarizes Mr. Huberdeau.
While 80% of Quebec boys graduate from high school, 88% of Quebec girls do the same. Filling this “gap” between the sexes would make it possible to achieve “an annual gain of around $165 million on Quebec’s GDP”, supports the study.
The fight against dropping out among men is thus “the important project” in the fight against illiteracy, points out Pierre Langlois.
To establish these statistics, his study is based solely on modeling, because the pandemic has prevented researchers from conducting their surveys in the field.
The disruptions linked to the coronavirus in the school network also blurred the results. Dropout has increased in the past two years, although the temporary withdrawal of departmental exams may have increased the graduation rate. It will be necessary to wait a few years before measuring the effect of the health crisis on the education of Quebecers.