Literacy and Life Skills for Pasifika Adults: Results from the Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey

4. Educational attainment

This section is concerned with the distribution of skills by educational attainment amongst Pasifika peoples.

Figure 4.1 shows the distribution of those with lower secondary or less education, those with upper secondary education and those with tertiary education among Pasifika peoples measured by the ALL and IALS surveys. Figures 4.2 to 4.5 show the distributions of each of prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy and problem solving skill by educational attainment for Pasifika adults in New Zealand. In addition, Figures 4.2 and 4.3 show the comparable statistics available from the IALS survey.

Overall, Figures 4.1 to 4.5 indicate that:

• There was a substantial increase in the proportion of Pasifika adults with an upper secondary level education¹³. Similarly, there was a substantial increase in the proportion of Pasifika adults with a tertiary level education¹⁴.
• For all four skill domains (prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy, and problem solving skill), for all levels of educational attainment, the majority (from 55 percent to 93 percent) of Pasifika adults in 2006 had level 1 or 2 skills. However, for prose and document literacy for Pasifika adults with tertiary education levels, this was a fairly slim majority (57 percent and 55 percent respectively).
• For all four skill domains, where comparison was possible, in 2006 Pasifika adults with a tertiary level education had substantially higher skills than Pasifika adults with lower levels of education.
• The percentage of Pasifika adults with an upper secondary level education with level 3, 4, or 5 prose literacy appeared to decrease from 1996 to 2006. The same held true for document literacy. The percentage of Pasifika adults with a tertiary level education with level 3, 4, or 5 document literacy remained stable over the period.
  

Figure 4.1: Educational attainment, IALS and ALL

Figure 4.2: Prose literacy level by educational attainment, IALS and ALL

Notes:

1. To allow statistically robust estimates, levels 1 and 2 and levels 3, 4 and 5 were grouped together.
2. Figures for “Tertiary” in IALS and “Lower secondary or less” in ALL were not included because of their low statistical quality.
   

Figure 4.3: Document literacy level by educational attainment, IALS and ALL

Notes:

1. To allow statistically robust estimates, levels 1 and 2 and levels 3, 4 and 5 were grouped together.
2. Figures for “Lower secondary or less” in IALS and ALL were not included because of their low statistical quality.
   

Figure 4.4: Numeracy level by educational attainment, ALL only

Notes:

1. To allow statistically robust estimates, levels 3, 4 and 5 were grouped together.
2. Numeracy was not measured in the IALS survey.
3. Figures for “Lower secondary or less” were not included because of their low statistical quality.
   

Figure 4.5: Problem-solving level by educational attainment, ALL only

Notes:

1. To allow statistically robust estimates, levels 3 and 4 were grouped together.
2. Problem-solving was not measured in the IALS survey.
3. Figures for “Lower secondary or less” were not included because of their low statistical quality.
   

Footnotes

13. Lower secondary or less’ means completed at most Year 10, ‘higher secondary’ means completed more than Year 10 but no more than Year 13, and ‘tertiary’ means participated in a tertiary education programme.
    
14. The New Zealand Household Labour Force survey records that from 1996 to 2006, the percentage of Pasifika adults aged between 15 and 64 with a tertiary qualification increased from around 23 percent to 28 percent.