Slight improvement in the region’s literacy rate

Literacy rates have shown little improvement in the Islands in recent years, according to data compiled by the Literacy Foundation.

The study, based on the 2021 census, indicates that 57.8 percent of the islands’ residents did not meet the threshold considered necessary to understand longer, more complex texts, which is the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) Level 3.

This represents a 1.4% decrease from the previous census in 2016 (58.6%).

This decrease echoes the trend observed throughout Quebec, where this same rate fell to 51.6%, a 2.6% drop in 4 years.

The author of the study, economist Pierre Langlois, notes that remote regions are having more difficulty catching up with urban areas, mainly because of a more aging population.

The researcher also sees school dropouts related to labor shortages as a challenge to improving graduation and literacy rates.

Note that the administrative regions of Montreal, Quebec City and Laval have the highest literacy rates in the province, while the Nord-du-Québec and Côte-Nord regions have the lowest.