The results of the International Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), published on Tuesday, reveal a disturbing increase in the percentage of adult Austriawho have difficulty with reading and understanding even simple texts and with execution basic math tasks.
In 2012-2023, the number of people aged 16-65 struggling with reading skills has almost doubledreaching the level of over a quarter of the study population. Currently it is 29 proc., while 10 years ago the worst results concerned only 16 proc. adults.
Experts warn that “people who can solve tasks only at the first level of competence are basically… functionally illiterate“. This means that they cannot even cope with the tasks they should be able to do a child after completing primary school.
Austria. Problem with reading. However, it is not the immigrants who are to blame
Specialists also point out that the large migrant community cannot be blamed for the poor results of the study in Austria, as suggested by some press publications.
The analysis of the report shows that even if we exclude people who could not take the test due to a language barrier (e.g. migrants – ed.), the percentage of people with the weakest language skills is still remains very high and amounts to 27%.
Additionally, the study shows that there are almost no differences in reading skills between second-generation migrants and people without a migrant background (265 points compared to 267 points).
Austrians performed well in mathematics
There are also areas of research in which the Austrians have achieved much better results. Austria got the result 267 points in mathematics, what is it above the OECD average amounting to 263 points. In addition only 23 percent subjects achieved “particularly poor results” on math tasks.
The situation is similar in the newly introduced category “adaptive problem solving“, where the Austrians scored 253 points, above the OECD average (251 points).
The best results in the study were obtained Finland, Japan i Sweden. Chile was the worstwhich took last place in all categories. Countries such as Portugal, Lithuania, Israel and others recorded particularly poor results Italy.