Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Adult Female: % of Females Aged 15 and Above data was reported at 77.747 % in 2010. This records an increase from the previous number of 51.787 % for 2007. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Adult Female: % of Females Aged 15 and Above data is updated yearly, averaging 59.803 % from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2010, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 77.747 % in 2010 and a record low of 51.787 % in 2007. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Adult Female: % of Females Aged 15 and Above data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Zambia – Table ZM.World Bank.WDI: Education Statistics. Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.; ; UNESCO Institute for Statistics; Weighted average; Each economy is classified based on the classification of World Bank Group's fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018).

Actual value and historical data chart for Zambia Literacy Rate Adult Total Percent Of People Ages 15 And Above

Graph and download economic data for Literacy Rate, Adult Total for Zambia (SEADTLITRZSZMB) from 1990 to 2023 about Zambia, literacy, adult, and rate.

Adult literacy rate of Zambia rocketed by 23.01% from 71.1 % in 2018 to 87.5 % in 2020. Since the 11.41% slump in 2007, adult literacy rate shot up by 43.14% in 2020. Adult (15+) literacy rate (%). Total is the percentage of the population age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life. Generally, ‘literacy’ also encompasses ‘numeracy’, the ability to make simple arithmetic calculations. This indicator is calculated by dividing the number of literates aged 15 years and over by the corresponding age group population and multiplying the result by 100.

Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth: % of People Age 15-24 data was reported at 88.715 % in 2010. This records an increase from the previous number of 64.050 % for 2007. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth: % of People Age 15-24 data is updated yearly, averaging 69.089 % from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2010, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 88.715 % in 2010 and a record low of 64.050 % in 2007. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth: % of People Age 15-24 data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Zambia – Table ZM.World Bank.WDI: Education Statistics. Youth literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15-24 who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.; ; UNESCO Institute for Statistics; Weighted average; Each economy is classified based on the classification of World Bank Group's fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018).

Historical dataset showing Zambia literacy rate by year from 1990 to 2020.

Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth Male: % of Males Aged 15-24 data was reported at 91.196 % in 2010. This records an increase from the previous number of 70.308 % for 2007. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth Male: % of Males Aged 15-24 data is updated yearly, averaging 72.616 % from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2010, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 91.196 % in 2010 and a record low of 67.269 % in 1990. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth Male: % of Males Aged 15-24 data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Zambia – Table ZM.World Bank.WDI: Education Statistics. Youth literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15-24 who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.; ; UNESCO Institute for Statistics; Weighted average; Each economy is classified based on the classification of World Bank Group's fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018).

Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth Female: % of Females Aged 15-24 data was reported at 86.509 % in 2010. This records an increase from the previous number of 58.478 % for 2007. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth Female: % of Females Aged 15-24 data is updated yearly, averaging 66.227 % from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2010, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 86.509 % in 2010 and a record low of 58.478 % in 2007. Zambia ZM: Literacy Rate: Youth Female: % of Females Aged 15-24 data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Zambia – Table ZM.World Bank.WDI: Education Statistics. Youth literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15-24 who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.; ; UNESCO Institute for Statistics; Weighted average; Each economy is classified based on the classification of World Bank Group's fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018).

Elderly literacy rate, population 65+ years, both sexes (%) in Zambia was reported at 60.2 % in 2018, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Zambia - Elderly literacy rate, population 65+ years, both sexes - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on October of 2025.

Actual value and historical data chart for Zambia Literacy Rate Youth Female Percent Of Females Ages 15 24

Zambia ZM: Gender Parity Index (GPI): Literacy Rate: Youth Aged 15-24 data was reported at 0.949 Ratio in 2010. This records an increase from the previous number of 0.832 Ratio for 2007. Zambia ZM: Gender Parity Index (GPI): Literacy Rate: Youth Aged 15-24 data is updated yearly, averaging 0.912 Ratio from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2010, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 0.974 Ratio in 1990 and a record low of 0.832 Ratio in 2007. Zambia ZM: Gender Parity Index (GPI): Literacy Rate: Youth Aged 15-24 data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Zambia – Table ZM.World Bank.WDI: Education Statistics. Gender parity index for youth literacy rate is the ratio of females to males ages 15-24 who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.; ; UNESCO Institute for Statistics; Weighted average; Each economy is classified based on the classification of World Bank Group's fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018).

Time series data for the statistic Literacy_Rate_Adult_Total and country Zambia. Indicator Definition:Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.The statistic "Literacy Rate Adult Total" stands at 82.04 percent as of 12/31/2023, the highest value since 12/31/2011. Regarding the One-Year-Change of the series, the current value constitutes an increase of 2.07 percentage points compared to the value the year prior.The 1 year change in percentage points is 2.07.The 3 year change in percentage points is 0.2827.The 5 year change in percentage points is 10.91.The Serie's long term average value is 75.57 percent. It's latest available value, on 12/31/2023, is 6.47 percentage points higher, compared to it's long term average value.The Serie's change in percentage points from it's minimum value, on 12/31/1990, to it's latest available value, on 12/31/2023, is +17.04.The Serie's change in percentage points from it's maximum value, on 12/31/2010, to it's latest available value, on 12/31/2023, is -1.10.

Actual value and historical data chart for Zambia Elderly Literacy Rate Population 65 Years Male Percent

The number of persons age 25 to 64 who are literate divided by the total population age 25 to 64. Literate persons are identified using the IPUMS LIT variable (LIT = 2). Censuses provide differing criteria with respect to the level of ability that should constitute literacy. These differences are generally evident in the varying wording of the instructions to the census enumerators. Typically, the instructions appear to be aimed at distinguishing persons who have memorized how to write their signature or recognize certain words from those that can truly write and comprehend text they read. Some samples identify "semi-literate" persons who can read but cannot write in the unharmonized source variables. In all samples those persons are considered illiterate in LIT. For more information, see https://international.ipums.org/international-action/variables/LIT#description_section.This dataset contains all existing disagregations and, and the latest vintage data for the indicator.Each disaggregation is in a separate column. There is a single row per geography.Data download: CSV File Shape File File GeodatabaseDomain: EDUCATION Subdomain: LiteracyGeography Level: CountryMeasure: PercentageUniverse: Persons age 25-64Age Universe: 25-64Sex Universe: BothMarital Status Universe: All

The number of persons age 65 or older who are literate divided by the total population age 65 or older. Literate persons are identified using the IPUMS LIT variable (LIT = 2). Censuses provide differing criteria with respect to the level of ability that should constitute literacy. These differences are generally evident in the varying wording of the instructions to the census enumerators. Typically, the instructions appear to be aimed at distinguishing persons who have memorized how to write their signature or recognize certain words from those that can truly write and comprehend text they read. Some samples identify "semi-literate" persons who can read but cannot write in the unharmonized source variables. In all samples those persons are considered illiterate in LIT. For more information, see https://international.ipums.org/international-action/variables/LIT#description_section.This dataset contains all existing disagregations and, and the latest vintage data for the indicator.Each disaggregation is in a separate column. There is a single row per geography.Data download: CSV File Shape File File GeodatabaseDomain: EDUCATION Subdomain: LiteracyGeography Level: CountryMeasure: PercentageUniverse: Persons age 65+Age Universe: 65+Sex Universe: BothMarital Status Universe: All

Abstract

The Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) is a consortium of Ministries of Education and Culture located in the Southern Africa subregion. This consortium works in close partnership with the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). SACMEQ’s main aim is to undertake co-operative educational policy research in order to generate information that can be used by decision-makers to plan the quality of education. SACMEQ’s programme of educational policy research has four features which have optimized its contributions to the field of educational planning: (1) it provides research-based policy advice concerning high-priority educational quality issues that have been identified by key decision-makers in Southern Africa, (2) it functions as a co-operative venture based on a strong network of Ministries of Education and Culture, (3) it combines research and training components that are linked with institutional capacity building, and its future directions are defined by participating ministries. In each participating country, a National Research Co-ordinator is responsible for implementing SACMEQ’s projects.

The SACMEQ I Project commenced in 1995 and was completed in 1999. The SACMEQ I main data collection was implemented in seven SACMEQ Ministries of Education (Kenya, Mauritius, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, Zanzibar, and Zimbabwe). The study provided "agendas for government action" concerning: educational inputs to schools, benchmark standards for educational provision, equity in the allocation of educational resources, and the reading literacy performance of Grade 6 learners. The data collection for this project included information gathered from around 20,000 learners; 3,000 teachers; and 1,000 school principals.

This co-operative sub-regional educational research project collected data in order to guide decisionmaking in these countries with respect to questions around high priority policy issues. These included: • What are the baseline data for selected inputs to primary schools? • How do the conditions of primary schooling compare with the Ministry of Education and Culture’s own bench-mark standards? • Have educational inputs to schools been allocated in an equitable fashion? • What is the basic literacy level among pupils in upper primary school? • Which educational inputs to primary schools have most impact on pupil reading achievement at the upper primary level?

In 1995 there were five fully active members of SACMEQ: Mauritius, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania (Zanzibar), and Zimbabwe. These Ministries of Education and Culture participated in all phases of SACMEQ’s establishment and its initial educational policy research project. There are also four partially active members of SACMEQ: Kenya, Tanzania (Mainland), Malawi, and Swaziland. These Ministries of Education and Culture have made contributions to the preparation of the Project Plan for SACMEQ’s initial educational policy research project. Three other countries (Botswana, Lesotho, and South Africa) had observer status due to their involvement in SACMEQ related training workshops or their participation in some elements of the preparation of the first proposal for launching SACMEQ.

Geographic coverage

National Coverage

Analysis unit

• Pupils
• Schools
• Teachers

Universe

The target population for SACMEQ's Initial Project was defined as "all pupils at the Grade 6 level in 1995 who were attending registered government or non-government schools". Grade 6 was chosen because it was the grade level where the basics of reading literacy were expected to have been acquired.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

A stratified two-stage sample design was used to select around 150 schools in each country. Pupils were then selected within these schools by drawing simple random samples. A more detailed explanation of the sampling process is available under the 'Sampling' section of the report provided as external resources.

All sample designs applied in SACMEQ'S initial project were selected so as to meet the standards set down by the International Association for the Evaluation of Education Achievement (Ross, 1991). These standards require sample estimates of important pupil population characteristics to be (a) adjusted by weighing procedures designed to remove the potential for bias that may arise from different probabilities of selection, and (b) have sampling errors for the main criterion variables that are of the same magnitude or smaller than a simple random sample of 400 pupils (thereby providing 95 percent confidence limits for sample estimates of population percentages of plus or minus 5 percentage points, and 95 percent confidence limits for sample estimates of population means of plus or minus one tenth of a pupil standard deviation unit).

The desired target population in Zambia was 'all pupils at the Grade 6 level in the eleventh month of the school year, 1995, who were attending registered government and grant-aided schools in the country'. The number of schools and pupils in the desired, excluded, and defined population have been presented in Table 2.2 of the Sample Report provided as external resources. From the defined target population a probability sample of schools (with probability proportional to the Grade 6 enrolment in each school) was drawn. This resulted in a planned national sample of 165 schools and 3,300 pupils. This sample design was designed to yield an equivalent sample size' (Ross and Wilson, 1994) of 400 pupils - based on an estimated intra-class correlation (rho) for pupil reading test scores of around 0.30. In fact, after the rho was calculated for the reading scores, it was found to be 0.3 1 - which was about the same as had been expected At the first stage of sampling, schools were selected with a probability proportional to the number of pupils who were members of the defined target population. To achieve this selection a 'random start - constant interval' procedure was applied (Ross, 1987). In several strata there were some schools with numbers of pupils in the defined target population that exceeded the size of the 'constant interval', and therefore each of these schools was randomly broken into smaller 'pseudo schools' before the commencement of the sampling. At the second stage of sampling, a simple random sample of 20 pupils was selected within each selected school. Sampling weights were used to adjust for the disproportionate allocation of the sample across districts and also to account for the small loss of student data due to absenteeism on the day of the data collection.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The data collection for SACMEQ's Initial Project took place in October 1995 and involved the administration of questionnaires to pupils, teachers, and school heads. The pupil questionnaire contained questions about the pupils' home backgrounds and their school life; the teacher questionnaire asked about classrooms, teaching practices, working conditions, and teacher housing; and the school head questionnaire collected information about teachers, enrolments, buildings, facilities, and management. A reading literacy test was also given to the pupils. The test was based on items that were selected after a trial-testing programme had been completed.

The SACMEQ Data Collection Instruments include the following documents: - SACMEQ Questionnaires - which are administered to pupils, teachers, and school heads. - SACMEQ Tests - which are administered to pupils and teachers (covering reading mathematics, and HIV-AIDS knowledge). - Other SACMEQ Data Collection Instruments - such as take-home pupil questionnaires, school context proformas, and within-school project management documents.

Cleaning operations

All of the team leaders for the data collectors returned the instruments to the Ministry Headquarters (for the attention of the NRC), during the second week after the test administration. Once the instruments were returned to the Headquarters, three data entry staff within the Statistical Section of the Ministry entered the data, using the Data Entry Manager (DEM) a software programme developed at the IIEP (Schleicher, 1995). This software was adapted specifically for the entry of SACMEQ data. The data entry took six weeks and the data were sent on diskette to IIEP in March, 1996. It must be mentioned that at the time of data entry, the earlier version of the DEM structure files was used, and this caused major problems in cleaning the data at a later stage and reconstituting the structure of the files as they were meant to be.

Response rate

The planned sample was designed to contain 165 schools allocated across provinces, as shown in the first column of figures in Table 2.3 of the Survey Report provided as external resources. The achieved sample of schools was 157. The response rates for the sample have been recorded in Table 2.3. The percentage response for schools was 95.2 percent and that of pupils was 77.5 percent. The non-responding pupils were those who were absent on the day of testing. By province, this absenteeism varied from 2 to 12 percent.

Sampling error estimates

In the survey report provided as external resources, standard errors were provided for all important variables. The calculation of these errors acknowledged that the sample was not a simple random sample - but rather a complex two-stage cluster sample that included weighting adjustments to compensate for variations in selection probabilities. The errors were

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Rise Literacy Zambia

Zambie: Female literacy rate, ages 15-24: Pour cet indicateur, UNESCO fournit des données pour la Zambie de 1990 à 2020. La valeur moyenne pour Zambie pendant cette période était de 72.74 pour cent avec un minimum de 58.48 pour cent en 2007 et un maximum de 92.8 pour cent en 2020.

ZM：非文盲率：年轻人：占15-24岁人群百分比在12-01-2010达88.715%，相较于12-01-2007的64.050%有所增长。ZM：非文盲率：年轻人：占15-24岁人群百分比数据按年更新，12-01-1990至12-01-2010期间平均值为69.089%，共5份观测结果。该数据的历史最高值出现于12-01-2010，达88.715%，而历史最低值则出现于12-01-2007，为64.050%。CEIC提供的ZM：非文盲率：年轻人：占15-24岁人群百分比数据处于定期更新的状态，数据来源于World Bank，数据归类于全球数据库的赞比亚 – 表 ZM.世行.WDI：教育统计。

This dataset contains baseline Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data conducted under the USAID/Zambia Education Data activity between November – December 2018. Over 15,000 Grade 2 learners were assessed in one of the seven Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) languages of Instruction (LoI) (Chitonga, Cinyanja, Icibemba, Kiikaonde, Lunda, Luvale or Silozi) as well as in English. The EGRA was conducted in five target provinces (Eastern, Muchinga, North-Western, Southern and Western Provinces). The purpose of the 2018 baseline EGRA is to establish a baseline level from which changes in Grade 2 learners’ performance in the core reading skills can be tracked over time. Each assessment contained seven subtasks, which included; (1) listening comprehension in both the LoI and in English; (2) letter sound identification in the LoI; (3) syllable sound identification in the LoI; (4) non-word reading in the LoI; (5) oral reading fluency in the LoI; (6) reading comprehension in the LoI and; (7) English vocabulary. In addition, assessors also administered a Snapshot of School Management and Effectiveness (SSME), which included head teacher, teacher, and learner questionnaires, along with a school inventory, to establish school characteristics and learner demographics in the sampled schools. The 2018 Baseline EGRA used a stratified sampling methodology to randomly select a representative sample of 816 schools from the five target provinces. Of the 816 schools, 630 were Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ)-run primary schools and 186 were community-run schools.