Skills and education: How well do educational qualifications measure skills?

6. People with low qualifications and high literacy and numeracy skills

This section looks at people who do not have a qualification above level 3 on the New Zealand Register of Quality Assured Qualifications but whose literacy and/or numeracy was shown in the ALL survey as being high – in the highest quartile of literacy or numeracy scores.

The analysis below will show that the 25 percent with high literacy and/or numeracy tend to have higher qualifications, so the group of interest in this study – those with low qualifications but high skills – is small.

6.1: Educational differences

As one would expect, some of those in the high skills/low qualifications groups are current students – people whose lack of qualifications reflects their status at the time of the ALL survey but who were on the path to gaining qualifications. Among the group are secondary students who have not yet completed level 3, and tertiary students at level 4 or above who have not yet completed a qualification at that level. Of those with lower qualifications but prose literacy in the highest quartile, 16 percent are current students. Of the lower qualified with numeracy in the highest quartile, 23 percent are current students.

Almost all of the current students with low qualifications and high skills were between 16 and 24 years of age (94 percent of those with high prose literacy and 95 percent of those with high numeracy), and many were simply too young to have achieved at level 4 or above.

Students with lower educational qualifications as a group have a different literacy and numeracy profile from the lower qualified who are not students, as indicated in Figure 13. While students have a similar prevalence of high prose literacy to employed people, they have a higher prevalence of high numeracy than employed people and than those with other labour force status. These differences are statistically significant.

Many of the current students will be on their way to achieving a qualification at level 4 or higher. Retaining current students in the definition of those with lower qualifications but higher skills distorts the overall pattern of this group. Therefore, current students will be excluded in the rest of the analysis of this group.

After excluding students, between 162,000 and 211,000 people aged 16 to 65 years have no qualification beyond school level but have high prose literacy, while the corresponding figure for numeracy is between 146,000 and 189,000. The overlap between these two groups, that is, the number with low qualifications but high prose literacy and high numeracy, is between 83,000 and 119,000. Taking the midpoints of these ranges, 54 percent of those with low qualifications but with high prose literacy also have high numeracy, while 61 percent of those with high numeracy also have high prose literacy.

 

Figure 13: Prevalence of high prose literacy and numeracy (highest quartile) among those with no educational qualification above Level 3 by labour force status

 

Source: New Zealand results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ministry of Education calculations

Note: For an explanation of the categories see Appendix A. The bars represent the margins of error (at the 95% confidence level). Margins of error are large, and more detailed breakdowns are not feasible, due to the small size of the low qualification/high skills groups.

Within the group of non-students with educational qualifications at level 3 or lower, there are considerable differences according to the precise level of educational achievement, as indicated in Figure 14. The prevalence of high prose literacy and of high numeracy is comparable between non-students who have completed Year 12 or 13 at secondary school and those who have completed Level 1 to 3 certificates. But the prevalence of high prose literacy and of high numeracy is much lower among non-students who have completed Year 11 or less, and this difference is statistically significant. This difference is likely to reflect both the effect of more time spent in education enhancing literacy and numeracy skills and also a tendency for those with lower literacy and numeracy to exit education at an earlier stage than those with higher skills.

 

Figure 14: Prevalence of high prose literacy and numeracy (highest quartile) among non-students with no educational qualification above Level 3

 

Source: New Zealand results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ministry of Education calculations

Note: For an explanation of the categories see Appendix A. The bars represent the margins of error (at the 95% confidence level). Margins of error are large, and more detailed breakdowns are not feasible, due to the small size of the low qualification/high skills groups.

 

6.2: Demographic differences

This section looks at the age and gender characteristics of the low qualifications/high skills group as we have defined it – those who are not current students, have no qualifications beyond the level of Year 13 at secondary school and with skills in the top quartile in the ALL survey. This group is bunched towards the middle of the age range, with approximately one-third in the age band 35-44, and about one-third in each of the wider bands 16-34 and 45-65.

There is no clear difference between age groups in the prevalence of high prose literacy among non-students, as indicated in Figure 15.

 

Figure 15: Prevalence of high English prose literacy and high numeracy (highest quartile) among non-students with no educational qualification above Level 3 by age group – 2006 – ALL survey

Source: New Zealand results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ministry of Education calculations

Note: For an explanation of the categories see Appendix A. The bars represent the margins of error (at the 95% confidence level). Margins of error are large, and more detailed breakdowns are not feasible, due to the small size of the low qualification/high skills groups.

This is an interesting result in terms of what it indicates about the relationship between adult literacy and numeracy skills and tertiary education.

We know that overall there is a strong association between higher literacy and numeracy and having tertiary qualifications. However there are a number of ways this association could come about. One is that tertiary education could have a causative effect, that is, tertiary education could directly develop learners’ literacy and numeracy. Another possibility is that higher literacy and numeracy skills are developed during schooling and provide a platform for achieving tertiary qualifications. Alternatively tertiary education could provide entry to employment in careers which provide regular practice of literacy and numeracy skills and this is what leads to higher skills. Or those who acquire tertiary qualifications could be people with a habit of effective self-education who are capable of developing their own skills with or without a formal educational framework.

In the age range covered by the ALL survey, the oldest respondents would have left school at a time when only a relatively small elite group participated in tertiary education, and many skilled jobs were open to school leavers, while the youngest have left school at a time when tertiary participation was much higher and when tertiary qualifications were becoming necessary for entry to a broader range of skilled jobs. Therefore the composition of the group without tertiary qualifications differs across the age range. In particular, the oldest respondents would have had lower expectations of tertiary participation than younger ones, but more opportunities to develop skilled careers without tertiary qualifications.

Given these differences across the age range and assuming that a tertiary education is not the principal means of achieving high literacy and numeracy skills, we would expect that the chances of a person without tertiary qualifications having high literacy and numeracy skills would be greatest in the oldest age group. But as we can see this is not the case in the ALL survey data.

The oldest age group we can distinguish in the ALL data is those aged 45 to 65 years. People in this group left school before, during and after the first major expansion of tertiary participation in the late 1960s and early 1970s⁷.

It may be that there are not enough respondents from the pre-expansion period to get a clear picture.

As a result, we have looked at the corresponding graph from the predecessor of ALL, the 1996 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). IALS covered prose and document literacy but not the other two skill domains measured in ALL. The measures of literacy in ALL were developed so as to ensure that they measured the ‘same thing’ as IALS and so that the ALL levels were consistent with IALS levels (Satherley, Lawes and Sok, 2008a).

In the IALS survey, most of the respondents aged 45 to 65 years (i.e. born between 1931 and 1951) would have left school before the expansion of tertiary participation from the late 1960s. Therefore if there were a substantial number of people in this age group who had developed high literacy or numeracy skills through schooling, work experience or self-education then this should show up in the prevalence of high prose literacy by age for those without tertiary qualifications, which is presented in Figure 16.

 

Figure 16: Prevalence of high English prose literacy (highest quartile) among non-students with no educational qualification above Level 3 by age group – 1996 – IALS survey

Source: New Zealand results of the International Adult Literacy Survey 1996. Ministry of Education calculations

The relatively low prevalence of high prose literacy in those aged 45 to 65 years in Figure 16 suggests that in the absence of tertiary qualifications, other pathways to high prose literacy are relatively ineffective. In particular, greater participation of lower-qualified people in skilled jobs does not appear to have led to a higher prevalence of high prose literacy in the older age group.

Analysis of the age distributions of those with low qualifications and high skills in the two surveys therefore supports the conclusion that tertiary education has an important role in developing high literacy and numeracy skills.

Returning to the ALL survey results, one factor which may help to explain the age distribution is that among non-students with lower achievement, the percentage who have completed only Year 11 or less increases with age (35 percent of those aged 16 to 34, 43 percent of those aged 35 to 44, and 58 percent of those aged 45 to 65), reflecting the fact that in the past, people were not expected to spend as long in education. And as seen in Figure 13, those who have completed only Year 11 or less have a much lower prevalence of high prose literacy.

The main difference between the age groups is this difference in educational background. There are only small differences between the age groups in terms of other factors such as employment status, occupation and computer use at work. The degree of overlap between the group with high prose literacy and that with high numeracy is similar in the different age groups.

A conceivable confounding factor could be a general tendency for skills to decline with age after 45 years. If this was a factor it could be expected to affect the population as a whole. However, when the skills of the population are modelled and factors including education, labour force status, occupation, computer use, first language and gender are taken into account, no clear evidence is found for such a decline.

There are marginal gender differences in the low qualifications/high skills group. There is a majority of women among those with low qualifications and high prose literacy but the difference is not statistically significant. There is a majority of men with low qualifications and high numeracy, and the difference is close to statistical significance.

 

Figure 17: Prevalence of high English prose literacy and numeracy (highest quartile) among non-students with no educational qualification above Level 3 by gender

Source: New Zealand results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ministry of Education calculations

Note: For an explanation of the categories see Appendix A. The bars represent the margins of error (at the 95% confidence level). Margins of error are large, and more detailed breakdowns are not feasible, due to the small size of the low qualification/high skills groups

6.3: Employment differences

Of the group with lower educational achievement but high skills as we have defined it, the largest group had been in paid employment⁸ during the previous year; those in paid employment constituted 91 percent of non-students with lower achievement but high prose literacy and 93 percent of the group with high numeracy. The number of respondents in this category who were not employed was too small to make reliable estimates of their characteristics.

Of those with lower educational achievement but higher prose literacy, the largest occupational groups were clerks (26 percent), service workers (18 percent), managers (15 percent), technicians (approximately 14 percent⁹), and professionals (approximately 8 percent). Clerical workers (approximately 23 percent), technicians (approximately 16 percent) and managers (15 percent) are the three largest groups among those with low qualifications and high numeracy.

Figure 18 shows the prevalence of high English prose literacy and numeracy for non-students with lower achievement, by occupation. There are somewhat different occupational patterns for prose literacy and numeracy. Firstly, there are sufficient numbers of non-student survey participants with lower achievement but high prose literacy who are in the professional occupation group to distinguish this group from others. However this is not the case for numeracy.

Secondly, among non-students with lower achievement, the clerical, managerial and professional occupational groups all have a considerably higher prevalence of high prose literacy than all other occupational groups. However, there is not such a clearcut difference for numeracy, though managers have a considerably higher prevalence of high numeracy than other occupational groups apart from clerks.

 

Figure 18: Prevalence of high English prose literacy and numeracy (highest quartile) among non-students with no educational qualification above Level 3 by occupational group

Source: New Zealand results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ministry of Education calculations

Note: For an explanation of the categories see Appendix A. The bars represent the margins of error (at the 95% confidence level). Margins of error are large, and more detailed breakdowns are not feasible, due to the small size of the low qualification/high skills groups. Estimates of prevalence of high prose literacy and numeracy for service workers and technicians were of marginal reliability and have not been included.

The higher prevalence of people from the low qualifications/high skills groups in clerical and managerial occupations may reflect two possible causes. First, those in clerical and managerial occupations are likely to be working with items of text and/or with numbers as part of their routine work. As a result, they will be using literacy and numeracy skills more often and thus will be practising these skills on a daily basis . Second, there may be a selection effect – people are employed in or succeed in those sorts of jobs because they have better literacy and numeracy skills.

Of non-students with low qualifications (to Year 13 or Level 3 certificate) who had high prose literacy, the largest groups were in the industry categories ‘Community, social and personal services’ (36 percent) and ‘Wholesale and retail’ (25 percent), with the remaining 39 percent spread across all other industry categories. Of non-students with low qualifications but high numeracy, 30 percent were in ‘Community, social and personal services’, 25 percent in ‘Wholesale and retail’, 15 percent in ‘Manufacturing’, 11 percent in ‘Construction’ and 20 percent in all other industries combined.

The prevalence of high English prose literacy and numeracy among non-students with lower achievement in different industries is represented in Figure 18. For numeracy there is no clearcut difference between people in different industries, but for prose literacy, people in the industry category ‘Community, social and personal services’ had a higher prevalence of high skills than all other industries apart from ‘Wholesale and retail’.

 

Figure 19: Prevalence of high English prose literacy and numeracy (highest quartile) among non-students with no educational qualification above Level 3 by industry

Source: New Zealand results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ministry of Education calculations

Note: For an explanation of the categories see Appendix A. The bars represent the margins of error (at the 95% confidence level). Margins of error are large, and more detailed breakdowns are not feasible, due to the small size of the low qualification/high skills groups. Estimates of high prose literacy and numeracy for manufacturing were of marginal reliability and are not included.

6.4: Migration and language differences

Of those non-students with lower educational achievement who had high English prose literacy, the largest group (87 percent) were born in New Zealand. The corresponding figure for non-students with low qualifications but high numeracy is 88 percent. The number of respondents in this category who were immigrants was too small to make reliable estimates of their characteristics.

Likewise, almost all of the people in the low qualifications/high skills groups had English as a first language (99 percent of non-students with low qualifications and high prose literacy, and 97 percent of those with low qualifications and high numeracy). The number of respondents in this category who had other first languages was too small to make reliable estimates of their characteristics.

Figure 20 shows the prevalence of high prose literacy among non-students with lower achievement according to their place of birth. There is a difference which is almost statistically significant between New Zealand born and non-New Zealand born people, with the higher prevalence among the New Zealand born.

 

Figure 20: Prevalence of high English prose literacy (highest quartile) among non-students with no educational qualification above Level 3 by place of birth

Source: New Zealand results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ministry of Education calculations

Note: For an explanation of the categories see Appendix A. The bars represent the margins of error (at the 95% confidence level). Margins of error are large, and more detailed breakdowns are not feasible, due to the small size of the low qualification/high skills groups

 

There is no graph for numeracy because the estimate of the prevalence of high numeracy among the overseas-born is of marginal reliability.

Footnotes

7. The ALL 45-65 age-group was born between 1941 and 1961 and hence, turned 18 between 1959 and 1979. The first wave of expanded access to tertiary education occurred from the late 1960s, so many of those people in this age-group will have had opportunities to study at a tertiary level.
8. This includes employment that was mostly full-time, mostly part-time or variable.
   
9. The following estimates in these breakdowns are of marginal reliability: technicians and professionals with high prose literacy, and clerks and technicians with high numeracy.
10. There is a series of questions in the ALL questionnaire about literacy and numeracy practices at work. The responses to these questions confirm that people in these occupations are regularly engaged in a wide range of literacy and numeracy practices.