{"id":913,"date":"2007-12-06T21:34:28","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T13:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/?p=913"},"modified":"2014-12-08T08:54:36","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T00:54:36","slug":"8-million-australians-unable-to-cope-with-math-demands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/learn-math\/8-million-australians-unable-to-cope-with-math-demands-913","title":{"rendered":"8 million Australians unable to cope with math demands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Update:<\/b> The 2011 results are now in, so here they are.  <\/p>\n<p>The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abs.gov.au\/ausstats\/abs@.nsf\/Lookup\/4228.0Main+Features702011-12\">2011 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALLS)<\/a> results.<\/p>\n<p>According to the ABS:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The ALLS provides information on knowledge and skills in the following four domains;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prose literacy<\/li>\n<li>Document literacy<\/li>\n<li>Numeracy<\/li>\n<li>Problem solving<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There are 5 skill levels, with level 1 being the lowest. <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>To assist with interpreting the results, Level 3 is regarded by the survey developers as the \"minimum required for individuals to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work in the emerging knowledge-based economy\"<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h2>Comments on the 2006 results<\/h2>\n<p>The results are very sad. For <strong>Prose Literacy<\/strong> (defined as \"the ability to understand and use information from various kinds of narrative texts, including texts from newspapers, magazines and brochures\"), <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>... approximately 7 million (46%) Australians aged 15 to 74 years had scores at Level 1 or 2<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Mathematics does not look very good either. The <strong>numeracy scale<\/strong> (defined as \"the knowledge and skills required to effectively manage and respond to the mathematical demands of diverse situations\") gave the following result:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>On the numeracy scale, approximately 7.9 million (53%) Australians were assessed at Level 1 or 2.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh dear. It does not make pretty reading.<\/p>\n<p>See the report at: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abs.gov.au\/ausstats\/abs@.nsf\/Lookup\/4228.0Main+Features702011-12\">2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"alt\"><a href=\"#respond\" id=\"comms\">Be the first to comment<\/a> below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why are there so many under-performing Australians in the literacy, numeracy and problem solving domains?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}