Last week, hundreds of events in France highlighted the daily work of countless local figures to combat illiteracy, a nemesis that stops almost 7% of adults from gaining access to training and employment. 

Profile of an illiterate person: preconceptions live on

Illiteracy. The word still sounds taboo, like a name heavy with connotation describing a proportion of the population on the fringes of the social norm. Illiteracy describes people who have been to school in France but don’t have enough reading, writing, mathematics and general basic skills to be independent in everyday life (functional illiteracy). It affects 7% of French people aged 18-65; the figure is 16% if you include people who have not been educated in France (illiteracy). Who are these sufferers?

The reality is very different to collective imagination: illiteracy is completely different to learning French as a foreign language and therefore does not go hand in hand with immigration; 71% of French illiterates spoke the language at home as a child. However, most countries put functional illiteracy and illiteracy into the same box; the clear difference between average OECD country literacy and numeracy levels for people born in France and immigrants may partly explain why the French are among those with the lowest basic skills.

In terms of training and employment, illiterates are never who you’d expect: although there may be a solid core of unqualified young people, adult jobseekers and people on income support, over half are in work and aged over 45. Their shortcomings going unnoticed could be explained by the fact that French employers require fewer skills in literacy and IT (but more in numeracy) than their European counterparts according to the PIAAC’s most recent study, particularly in industries heavily affected by illiteracy such as farming and construction. Workers who don’t use their basic skills tend to forget them which means it’s vital to build on them and update them throughout life.

However, people affected by illiteracy are of course at a disadvantage with access to training and employment, for example in terms of income. They are also particularly vulnerable in everyday life due to the difficulty of accessing social services, healthcare, information and culture. Going to the supermarket or filling in a tax form is an indescribable ordeal which could discredit skills and destroy self-esteem.

Fighting illiteracy in France: the need to act on all fronts

Illiteracy is caused by several things; aside from the gradual loss of skills, the correlation to the socio-economic environment is more prevalent in France than elsewhere. It can therefore take root at a very early age and be worsened by a chaotic school life whose scars take a long time to heal. The need to detect and prevent it at school is crucial to laying the foundations of confident basic skills learning. Certain measures unveiled for the new 2015 term by the French Ministry for Education are completely in line with this process e.g. with a “master the basics” component putting French language learning at the core of new programmes, the implementation of a “mathematics strategy”, better teacher training and support, new priority education policy etc. Improving personal support systems in school forms the basis of the most recent literacy report by think tank, France Stratégie.

The horizon isn’t all that bleak according to the French government think tank which predicts an automatic drop in the rate of illiteracy to 5.4% by 2025 with the appearance of new and better educated generations despite the “calculator effect” reported by INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics and Economics) which describes mediocre performance in calculation among young people who rely on intellectual crutches such as calculators and smartphones. The latest figures from PISA support these advances in written comprehension among young people as it found that France has made net progress and is above average among OECD countries. The widening gap between the best and the worst encourages better awareness in equal opportunities; one in ten young people were still found to be illiterate during the Defence & Citizenship Day and almost half had not completed school and were therefore unable to benefit from new procedures.

However, action undertaken for compulsory education is just the tip of the iceberg. How do you help the illiterate adult population when it’s harder to identify them, there’s more stigmatism, the profiles are so different and figures and funding in lifelong learning are so disparate? There has to be a coordinated project, a political message which was widely conveyed in 2013 when illiteracy was singled out as a “major national cause” resulted in countless new measures in the adult education sector. According to France Stratégie, there’s still a long way to go to reach a 3.5% illiteracy rate by 2025 with more assertive policies such as focusing on specific people (particularly seniors) and the worst affected sectors, building on career development advice for adults or even regrading funding (30% more of the annual budget allocated to the fight against illiteracy).

Literacy Week: highlight action in the field

The government’s main weapon in this battle is the French Agency in the Fight against Illiteracy (ANLCI) which designs solutions to assess the phenomenon, builds partnerships with figures and communicates best practices (see their Permanent forum of practices). In terms of charities, countless organisations reduce illiteracy on a daily basis such as the French Association for Vocational Adult Training (AFPA) which has, among other things, designed innovative tools for the illiterate through the Devin Mobilité project funded by the European Social Fund and a kit to identify illiterate situations; 10,000 illiterate people train at the AFPA every year.

Following the success of last year’s event, Literacy Week runs from September 8^th – 13^th 2015 and highlights these activities with over 200 events in France last week coordinated by the ANLCI with the battle cry “Act Together to Fight Illiteracy”. One of the star projects was the launch of the free Illiteracy Info Service phone line (0800 11 10 35).

Alexia Samuel 

·         Literacy Week 2015 and European Literacy Policy Network

·         European Basic Skills Network

·         EU High Level Group of Experts on Literacy - final report 2012