Poles are regressing in development. The data is merciless

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Almost 40 percent Polish women and men are functionally illiterate

OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, has just published a report “Do adults have the skills required to cope with life in a changing world?” (also known as the Survey of Adult Skills), which compiles data from 2017-2023. The study aimed to test reading comprehension, numeracy and adaptive problem solving skills.

These three skills: reading comprehension, numeracy and adaptive cognition were categorized into 4 levels of proficiency (level 1, 2, 3, 4)as well as the “below level 1” category. We will provide an explanation of the reading comprehension proficiency levels at the end of the article.

The data shows that as many as 39 percent adult Poles have the lowest level of proficiency in reading and understanding simple textswhile the average of OECD countries is 26% (in short – the fewer people in the lowest proficiency range, the better). This type of competence (or rather lack thereof) is called “functional illiteracy”.

In terms of counting, a similar percentage, because 38 percent of Poles also have the lowest competencesWhere in OECD countries, the average in this range is 25%.

However, the situation is even worse with adaptive problem solving, where 48 percent Poles are in the lowest proficiency range, and the OECD average is 30%.

Not everything is looking bleak. When it comes to level 2 proficiency in reading/writing, numeracy and adaptive problem solving, we have more Polish men and women in this range than in OECD countries, respectively: 40%, 37% and 39 percent (where the OECD average is 31, 31 and 38% respectively).

However, on the other hand, when it comes to the highest (third and fourth) levels of proficiency, there are the fewest Poles there, because:

• 21 percent in reading comprehension (OECD average – 43%)
• 25 percent in arithmetic skills (OECD average is 45%)
• 12 percent in adaptive problem-solving skills (average of OECD countries is 32%)

_{photo: OECD}

The OECD takes the liberty of noting that the percentages may not add up to 100%. due to rounding and points out that caution should be exercised when interpreting data from Poland due to the large number of respondents with unusual response patterns.

For context, on the topic of reading comprehension, level 1 referred to reading short texts and finding a single piece of information that was identical or synonymous with that given in the prompt. Some tasks required providing personal data in documents.

Level 2 concerns tasks in which respondents had to interpret data and information, paraphrase or sometimes make simple deductions in texts that sometimes contain conflicting information.

Level 3 are tasks in which respondents had to use information from many texts, make deductions and use general knowledge from a specialized field in texts that are longer and more complex.

Level 4 are tasks with many steps in which you need to connect, interpret and synthesize data and information from many long and complex texts. These tasks require high-level deduction and abstract thinking skills.