Great Britain

Surveys of literacy attainment have been going on in the United Kingdom since 1948. The main finding is that literacy standards have changed very little in that time. Among 8-year-olds (children in Year 3) in England and Wales, however, standards fell slightly in the late 1980s, and then recovered in the early 1990s. The few international comparisons available seem to show some slippage in the position of Britain's 9-year-olds between the 1970s and the 1990s, and a "trailing edge " of underachievement. Very few school-leavers and adults can be described as illiterate, but a significant percentage have limited literacy skills. For many people, literacy skills are insufficient to meet the demands of life, work, and citizenship. The British educational system has been generally successful in maintaining the standard of achievement in literacy. The international evidence shows that the levels achieved by middling and high performers are comparable to the best in the world. But international evidence and adult literacy surveys also show that there is a significant proportion of th