Skills in New Zealand: Survey of Adult Skills 2023 (PIAAC) Publications

Publication Details

This report provides a first look at findings from New Zealand’s participation in the OECD’s 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. The Survey directly measured the skills of New Zealand adults aged 16 to 65 in literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving. New Zealand was one of 31 countries participating in the survey. The Survey is part of the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

Author(s): Dee Earle, Principal Research Analyst, Paul Satherley, Senior Research Analyst, and Nicola Marshall, Senior Research Analyst, Ministry of Education

Date Published: December 2024

Summary

New Zealand’s results in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills must be treated with caution, especially when comparing them to the results of the previous survey in 2014 and those of other countries.

The OECD warns that our 2023 results may not be representative of the whole population because of having a much lower response rate than in 2014.

The 2023 Survey indicates that there has been a large drop in the average literacy and numeracy skills of New Zealanders aged 16 to 65 since the previous Survey of Adult Skills in 2014.

Other countries have also had large changes in scores and the OECD has applied some level of caution to the results of most of them.

A lot of the change in scores between 2014 and 2023 is likely to be due to the difficulties of surveying post-COVID-19 and lower engagement by survey respondents.

The survey was run in 2022 and 2023, just after the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. High employment rates made it difficult to recruit and retain both interviewers and interviewees. The Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 also disrupted data collection.

The drop in measured skills in New Zealand was across all population groups, and larger for men and people with lower skills. It is not plausible that there have been such large drops in actual skills across all groups.

Very little of the change in average scores in New Zealand can be explained by changes in the make-up of our population.

However, the results are still valuable for highlighting groups whose low skills may limit their opportunities to participate in work and everyday life, and for developing options to better support these groups.

Men were more likely than women to have low literacy skills, but men were more likely than women to have high numeracy skills.

People with no or low qualifications were more likely to have low skills and those with degrees were more likely to have high skills.

Having a home language other than English was more strongly associated with low skills than how long people had lived in New Zealand.

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