The results obtained in the IALSS literacy tests confirm that there are major gaps in how well Francophones, Anglophones and allophones performed. Individuals with English as their mother tongue did much better in the different literacy and numeracy tests than those in the other language groups. Whereas 13% of them placed at the first proficiency level on the prose scale, the corresponding proportion for Francophones was 22% and for allophones, 38%. At the other end of the scale, nearly 21% of Anglophones reached at least Level 4, compared to 13% for Francophones and 10% for allophones.
Chart 2
Distribution of proficiency levels on the different literacy
scales by mother tongue,
IALSS, 2003
Level
1
Level
2
Level
3
Level
4
and 5
1. The problem solving domain has only 4 categories and Level 1 covers half the scale from 0 to 500. However, no threshold was identified as was done for the other domains.
The distribution of results is similar for the document scale while for the numeracy scale and problem solving scale, the proportion of individuals at the first two levels is much higher.