Skills in Canada : first results from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)

Summary: This report presents the first 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). 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.