Skills in Canada: First Results from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) - ARCHIVED

This report presents the first Canadian results of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an initiative of OECD. PIAAC provides internationally comparable measures of three skills that are essential to processing information: literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving in technology-rich environments (referred to as PS-TRE).

Canada is one of 24 countries and sub-national regions participating in this initiative. A sample of over 27,000 respondents was collected and allows reliable estimation at the national, provincial and territorial level.

The report provides information about the literacy, numeracy and PS-TRE skills for the Canadian population aged 16 to 65. It provides results for Canada as a whole, as well as for all the provinces and territories. In addition, it looks at the relationships between skills proficiency and a range of socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, level of education) across the entire Canadian population. It also reports on first results on the literacy, numeracy and PS-TRE skills of Aboriginal populations, immigrants, and official-language minority communities.