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

Introduction 

The purpose of this report is to provide descriptive statistics derived from the 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey for the adult Māori population. The statistics cover the associations between literacy and numeracy skills and a range of demographic, socio-economic, education and employment-related variables.

The Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) survey built on the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) conducted in New Zealand in 1996. ALL measured skills in prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy and problem solving¹. IALS also measured prose and document literacy. Literacy and numeracy skills are key factors that contribute to people’s effectiveness and productivity, and hence New Zealand’s society and economy including the Māori population.

The ALL survey design included an ‘oversample’ of Māori adults which has provided the scope for more detailed analyses of the distribution of literacy and numeracy skills of adult Māori. However, limitations remain on the accuracy of very fine analysis. Figures of low statistical quality, because of small sample size, have not been reported.

This report describes the relationship between distributions of skills and each of the factors: age; gender; labour force status; educational attainment; income, income source, occupation and industry. For example, the distribution of age amongst Māori adults is presented, followed by distributions of literacy, numeracy and problem-solving levels for Māori adults at several age-groups. The descriptive statistics for the other factors are presented in a similar way to those for age.

Literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills are presented in terms of levels. Prose literacy, document literacy and numeracy have five levels of skill, while problem solving has four. Level 3 literacy and numeracy skills are considered to be the minimum for full participation in a knowledge society and economy². This report therefore aims to analyse skills in way that distinguishes low skills (ie level 1 or 2) from higher skills (ie level 3, 4 or 5).

In simple terms, the levels of difficulty in the skill domains correspond to ranges of scores. The difficulty levels range progressively from:

• accomplishing literacy information matching in short texts or performing simple one-step calculations; to
• making high-level text-based inferences or using abstract mathematical ideas³.

An appendix presents, in tabular form, the tables that the graphs in the report are based on, and includes estimates of sampling errors.

Four earlier reports investigating the distribution of skills among New Zealand’s entire adult population completed the Ministry of Education’s initial programme of ALL analysis. They, and other reports based on ALL analysis, are located at www.educationcounts.govt.nz/goto/all. Literacy and Life Skills for Māori Adults and Literacy and Life Skills for Māori Adults – Further Investigation belong to a developing programme of more indepth analysis. For more information about the ALL survey see The Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey: An Introduction (also located at www.educationcounts.govt.nz/goto/all).