OECD report highlights problems with numeracy in England

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently published a report entitled “Building Skills for All: A Review of England”, part of the OECD Skills Studies series of reports. Ronnie Cohen considers its findings.

The report compares basic skills in numeracy and literacy of working-age adults (i.e. between the ages of 16 and 65) between England and other developed countries and also compares basic skills between the young and close-to-retirement-age generations within countries. Its subheading was “Policy Insights from the Survey of Adult Skills”, and it was written by Malgorzata Kuczera, Simon Field and Hendrickje Catriona Windisch. The findings were based on the OECD Survey of Adult Skills of over 160 000 adults in 24 countries and sub-national regions, including 22 OECD member countries, between the ages of 16 and 65. This report received widespread coverage in the British media.

Although the OECD report focuses on England, it covers a large majority of UK citizens. Out of a total UK population of 65 million, 53 million live in England. This article focuses on the numeracy of working-age adults in England and the fundamental relevance of measurement skills in mathematics and numeracy. The report estimates that 9 million adults of working age in England have low basic skills. The report finds that low basic skills among the young are higher for every qualification level than their counterparts with comparable qualification levels in other countries. The report says that, “While overall, the performance of England is not much behind many other countries, England’s young people lag much further behind their counterparts in other countries, particularly on numeracy.”.

Comparisons of Young People between Countries

In the OECD numeracy rankings, England was ranked 22nd out of 23 developed countries. Only the USA, the only other major hold-out for the continued use of non-metric units, did worse with a numeracy ranking of 23rd out of 23 developed countries. In the 16-19 age group, England has three times more low-skilled young people than the best performing countries on average.

One chart compares the 16-34 age group with qualifications below upper secondary level in different countries using the distribution of numeracy and literacy scores. For numeracy, countries were ranked in ascending order of the mean. Of 23 countries in this  chart, Northern Ireland (UK) was ranked 21, United States was ranked 22 and England (UK) was ranked 23. This chart showed that unqualified young people in England have very weak basic skills. This chart excludes those with foreign qualifications and first
generation migrants who obtained their highest qualification before coming to England.

Another chart showed the distribution of numeracy skills among current university students aged 16-34 where countries were ranked in ascending order of the mean. Of 23 countries in this chart, Northern Ireland (UK) was ranked 21, United States was ranked 22 and England (UK) was ranked 23.

The source for both charts was OECD calculations based on the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) (2012) (database).

Comparisons of Different Age Groups in England

A quote from the OECD report states that, “For England, a further concern is that young adults perform no better than older ones. So although adults approaching retirement age (55 to 65 year olds) in England compare reasonably well with their counterparts in other countries, younger people are lagging badly behind.” The report expresses the concern that young people in England could fall even further behind their counterparts in other countries over time.

A chart shows differences between age groups within different countries and compares the proportion of the 16-24 age group with low skills compared to the 55-65 age group. In England and the USA, the younger age group’s skills are only marginally better than the retirement age group. For all other countries shown in the chart, they showed a much bigger improvement. A quote from the OECD report states that, “In most countries, but not in England, younger people have stronger basic skills than the generation of people approaching retirement”.

Practical Numeracy Example

The one practical numeracy test question quoted in the report concerned a petrol gauge. Survey participants were told the full capacity of a tank of petrol asked to estimate how much petrol was in the tank based on the sight of the gauge, assuming that the gauge is accurate. The 9 million low-skilled adults in England would struggle with such tasks. I suspect this has a lot to do with our predominantly awkward dual-unit measuring instruments. In other developed countries, they use single units on their measuring instruments whereas almost all our measuring instruments use cluttered dual units.

How the Measurement Mess leads to Poor Numeracy

One thing that is notable about the OECD report is that young people in England perform badly compared to their counterparts in other countries and compared to the 55-65 retirement age group. The 55-65 age group were born in the 1950’s and would have been educated in imperial units, which was consistent with what they saw outside the school gates, unlike the current metric-educated generation. It is notable that the US, another major country with a measurement mess, also does badly in international comparisons of numeracy skills.

As a result of the British measurement mess, many Britons have problems making sense of the measurements presented to them. This restricts their ability to perform calculations with related units. This was found in an independent survey carried out by YouGov, which you can find at http://www.ukma.org.uk/docs/sam.pdf. This survey found that:

• 76% of respondents were unable to answer correctly how many yards there are in a mile.
• 43% could not say how many metres there are in a kilometre.
• 32% of respondents were unable to answer correctly how many pounds there are in a stone.
• 39% did not give the correct answer when asked how many grams there are in a kilogram.

Alan Young, a maths teacher with several decades of teaching experience, is web master of the Dr Metric web site. He has been vindicated by the findings of the OECD report. Alas, subsequent British governments have failed to listen to him or to UKMA about the damaging effects of the measurement mess on British children’s education. Alan Young has described the problems that British school children face on a daily basis with our muddled measurements in the Summary Sheet page of his aptly named booklet, “How Big is an Acre? No-one knows”. It is worth repeating it here in full:

“Measurement is not just one element of the Primary mathematics syllabus, it is the origin of virtually all the concepts at this level. Consequently, it is very important to have just one system of units in place.

Because of our continued use of medieval units, British children have many more obstacles to overcome than those in other countries. For example they:

• do not understand that we live in a world that is almost exclusively designed and built using metric units
• do not see the relevance of what they learn about the metric system at school
• cannot measure kilometres on long journeys and cannot therefore relate what they read on O.S. maps to the real terrain
• have to use measuring instruments outside the classroom that have dual scales and are very confusing to read – the use of digital weighing scales does not normally solve this problem as most parents keep these set to stones and pounds
• have to convert between metric and imperial units in both directions
• have their science teaching undermined when weather forecasters suddenly change to degrees Fahrenheit when the temperature becomes very warm and other reporters mix and match medieval and metric units in the same report (often in the same sentence)
• are not able to compare their body measurements with those of their parents as parents are mostly still using medieval units, a set of units, incidentally, that they themselves do not properly understand
• lose everyday opportunities to undertake simple mathematical calculations at home based on measurement
• often move to secondary school without a good foundation in basic measuring skills and number work
• often see mathematics as boring and irrelevant and give up with the subject
• are more likely to make mistakes (some serious) due to lack of experience of metric units in everyday life.

It is not hard to see why children in most other economically comparable countries do considerably better in mathematics than our children. The banishment of medieval units from all aspects of our life would remove just about all of the problems given above that only our children have to face on a day to day basis.”

The full OECD “Building Skills for All: A Review of England” report can be found at the following link:
http://www.oecd.org/unitedkingdom/building-skills-for-all-review-of-england.pdf

You can find Alan Young’s Dr Metric web site at http://www.drmetric.com/. The Dr Metric site contains several videos that explain the educational problems caused by the continued use of medieval units in Great Britain. There you can request a copy of the “How Big is an Acre? No-one knows” booklet.