Reading beyond school years vital for tackling decline in literacy skills: Chan Chun Sing

SINGAPORE - The ongoing push by SkillsFuture Singapore to improve individuals’ job-related skills has to be coupled with efforts to encourage them to read and maintain their literacy, said Education Minister Chan Chun Sing on Jan 8.

“We need to encourage our people to read and maintain their literacy proficiency in order to process and manage information, especially in today’s bewildering world where the problem is not a deficit of information, but a deluge of information,” he said.

Mr Chan was responding in Parliament to questions from eight MPs, including Ms Foo Mee Har (West Coast GRC), Mr Patrick Tay (Pioneer SMC) and Ms Cheryl Chan (East Coast GRC), about the results of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) released on Dec 10.

The PIAAC, which is conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), looks at the proficiency of adults in literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem-solving skills. Singapore

was the most improved country for numeracy,

rising from 25th out of 39 countries in the previous study to 10th out of 31 countries in the most recent iteration.

The study also saw Singapore climb the ranks in adult literacy, from 28th to 18th place, but flagged a significant decline in literacy after the age of 35.

MPs like Ms Jessica Tan (East Coast GRC) asked about the decline in literacy skills among Singaporean adults and what initiatives are in place to maintain literacy levels, improve workforce competitiveness and support skills development across age groups.

They also asked about the impact of declining literacy on employability, the role of programmes like SkillsFuture in enhancing skills and how the effectiveness of these initiatives is monitored.

Combating the decline and obsolescence of skills requires a joint and lifelong effort from both individuals and employers, Mr Chan said.

Individuals have to take ownership of their learning journeys and take steps to constantly upskill and reskill, he said, while employers must “stay nimble and transform their business and jobs to compete internationally”.

Mr Chan added that employers must invest in their employees’ “career health”, by “articulating their company’s skills needs, and supporting their employees to undergo training”.

This will help combat the problems of skills atrophy and obsolescence, which have contributed to age-related losses in literacy skills, said Mr Chan.

Singapore’s younger generations have benefited from a better education system and opportunities compared with previous cohorts, said Mr Chan, dubbing this the “cohort effect”.

This is evident in the PIAAC scores, he said, where younger Singaporeans ranked among the top in all three proficiency domains, while older adults scored below the OECD average.

Skills tend to decline after leaving school, which leads to the atrophy effect as they are less frequently used at work, said Mr Chan, while the obsolescence effect takes place as skills become more outdated due to technological advancements and rapid market changes.

Mr Chan added that more research is being done on how technology has changed the way information is consumed and processed.

People are writing shorter social media posts and videos as compared to more “complex writing”, he said.

“As cognitive outsourcing becomes more prevalent with AI, there is also a risk of erosion of deep thinking and reflection,” he added.

Similar to how pedagogies, or teaching methods, have been researched for younger cohorts, Mr Chan said he has tasked the Institute for Adult Learning to look at adult pedagogies, such as using technology “to mass customise learning for our adults, because the same content delivered to a 25-year-old, a 35-year-old, a 45-year-old, will need to be different”.

An example of an institution which uses a mix of teaching methods is the Singapore University of Social Sciences, he said, as it has students from different generations in its classes.

Nominated MP Usha Chandradas asked about the possibility of the Ministry of Education (MOE) working with local publishers, booksellers and literary charities to improve literacy skills.

Mr Chan said that MOE is open to working with these groups.

“It’s not just encouraging people to read more, but also to read widely and to be more reflective,” he said. “We are all conscious of today’s media environment, where there are so many different channels competing for the attention of our people.

“We will have to keep up our effort to continue our encouragement to our people to keep learning, to keep reading, even as they are working, and they have gone beyond the school years.”