PIAACing my thoughts

To be honest, I've always felt a bit conflicted about PIAAC - the OECD's 'Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies', or survey of literacy, numeracy and critical problem solving capabilities amongst participating countries' adult populations.

OECD Survey of Adult Skills 2023

On the one hand the idea of a large-scale 'once a decade' international snapshot of adult literacies seems attractive: let's shine a light on educational and social inequalities, make comparisons between the participating countries and with last time, and (maybe...?) provide policymakers with some useful food for thought.

Yet it's also straight out of the neoliberalist playbook trying to 'govern by data' (Valiente and Lee, 2020) and framing adult education solely around notions of human capital, 'skills' and economic 'productiveness', brushing aside its broader social and emancipatory purposes. Comparisons between countries are also problematic, as they tend to ignore cultural and other differences that might skew what the survey is attempting to show.

It's perhaps instructive that England was the only constituent part of the UK included in the latest PIAAC cycle (for varying reasons, the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and NI all declined the opportunity to take part). Nevertheless, unsurprisingly, I've still seen lazy conflation of England and "the UK" in some reporting of the recent survey results.

When the Cycle 2 results were published last month I was naturally drawn towards the reports for Ireland (26 counties) and England. I was also interested in how these had respectively been received and the extent/framing of any reporting that accompanied each.

Ireland was (and is) still in the throes of government formation after November's general election, which perhaps limited the potential for much of a political response; beyond the Central Statistics Office Release (CSO.ie), the only prominent responses I've seen are from the Adult Literacy for Life Programme Office (see PIAAC Results Factsheet (adultliteracyforlife.ie PDF)) and from NALA (see Adult literacy needs have risen in Ireland (NALA.ie)). Taking the survey results at face value, they're not great news and validate the need for government intervention on at least the scale of what's been promised with Adult Literacy for Life.

There was scarcely more mainstream media reporting of England's results, although there was more widespread analysis and commentary from within the sector - most notably from the Learning and Work Institute (see Responding to the Survey of Adult Skills (learningandwork.org.uk)). Advocates of the controversial 'GCSE resits' policy for 16-18 learners have been buoyed by the apparent improvement in literacy and numeracy levels amongst younger adults, although the decline amongst England's wider/older adult population surely can't be viewed as anything other than a damning indictment of the decade-long decimation of the sector.

I really hope that important message doesn't get obscured.

Valiente, O., & Lee, M. (2020). Exploring the OECD survey of adult skills (PIAAC): implications for comparative education research and policy. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 50(2), 155–164. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1703846