Illiteracy in England

In 1999 it was estimated that one in three adults in England could not work out the area of a room and one in five adults could not find a plumber in the yellow pages. (See BBC 1999). In 2009 little had changed (See BBC 2009 and charts at Department for Children Literacy and Numeracy site).

The discussion of this problem revolved entirely around the quality of education. However, perhaps someone should ask why the problem has not improved over the past 10 years. A great deal of money has been spent on adult literacy so either adult literacy training is hopeless or vast numbers of new illiterate adults are entering society from schools or abroad or both.

In fact the adult literacy programmes have done quite well. Around 7% of the population of England arrived over the past 10 years from overseas (See Origins of the English) and a minimum of about 2 million of these new arrivals in England do not have English as a first language. In reality the adult literacy schemes have almost certainly reduced illiteracy amongst adults who were in England in 1999 by about 30% or 2 million. Unfortunately this 30% were then replaced by people for whom English was not a first language between 1999 and 2009.

The good news is that the children of some immigrant groups can do quite well. For example, the children of Indian immigrants statistically outperform the indigenous population. There is some concern however about the performance of the children of Caribbean parents (See National Literacy Trust: Literacy and education levels by ethnic group and populations).

What of the future? If there are say, 0.3 million adults entering the UK from abroad annually then in 30 years about 10 million adults will have origins where English is not their native tongue. It will probably be the case that at least 3 million of these will never be fully "native speaking" citizens. Furthermore, about 1-2 million adults can be added to this number as a result of organic illness and birth defects so around 4-5 million adults will always suffer from literacy problems in the UK, without medical advances or an end to immigration. This means that Alan Johnson's promise to end adult illiteracy by 2020 (Guardian 2006) is a blatant and knowing lie.

BBC 1999. Education: England's 'staggering' adult illiteracy. March 25, 1999. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/302972.stm

BBC 2009. Too many cannot read and write. 29 January 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7856001.stm

Guardian 2006. Minister promises to end adult illiteracy by 2020. Rebecca Smithers. The Guardian, Thursday 15 June 2006.

See

The predicted population of Britain

Child poverty in the UK

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