Building on our competencies : Miser sur nos compétences : résultats canadiens de l'Enquête internationale sur l'alphabétisation et les compétences des adultes, 2003

Paradoxically, the improvements achieved in the quality of schooling and in the level of educational attainment of the population have not diminished but reinforced the concern with literacy. [...] The IALSS sample is large enough to present the skills distributions of the population of each of the ten provinces and three territories and of specific subpopulations, such as immigrants, Aboriginal people and minority language groups. [...] Text box B The Adult Literacy and Life Skills Program (ALL) The development and management of the ALL study were co-ordinated by Statistics Canada and the Educational Testing Services (ETS, Princeton, United States) in collaboration with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the United States Department of Education, the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development (OEC [...] On the other hand, the comparisons to the 1994 IALS need to be restricted to the provinces since the northern territories were not part of the 1994 survey. [...] Average proficiency scores of provinces and territories The average proficiency scores of the adult population aged 16 and over in the Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia are above the Canadian averages across all four domains measured in the IALSS 2003 (See Text Box A1) while those of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Nunavut are below.