In the past five decades, the global literacy rate among adults has grown from 67 percent in 1976 to 87.36 percent in 2023. In 1976, males had a literacy rate of 76 percent, compared to a rate of 58 percent among females. This difference of over 17 percent in 1976 has fallen to just seven percent in 2020. Although gaps in literacy rates have fallen across all regions in recent decades, significant disparities remain across much of South Asia and Africa, while the difference is below one percent in Europe and the Americas. Reasons for these differences are rooted in economic and cultural differences across the globe. In poorer societies, families with limited means are often more likely to invest in their sons' education, while their daughters take up a more domestic role. Varieties do exist on national levels, however, and female literacy levels can sometimes exceed the male rate even in impoverished nations, such as Lesotho (where the difference was over 17 percent in 2014); nonetheless, these are exceptions to the norm.

There is a gender gap in the global literacy rate. Although literacy rates have generally increased worldwide for both men and women, men are on average more literate than women. As of 2024, about 90.91 percent of men and a little less than 88.8 percent of women worldwide were literate. Adult literacy rate is defined as the percentage of people aged 15 years and above who can both read and write with understanding a short, simple statement about their everyday life. Youth literacy rate Not only does the literacy gender gap concern adults, it also exists among the world’s younger generations aged 15 to 24. Despite an overall increase in literacy, young men are still more literate than young women. In fact, the global youth literacy rate as gender parity index was 0.98 as of 2023, indicating that young women are not yet as literate as young men. Gender pay gap Gender gaps occur in many different spheres of global society. One such issue concerns salary gender gaps in professional life. Regarding the controlled gender pay gap, which measures the median salary for men and women with the same job and qualifications, women still earned less than men as of 2024. The difference was even bigger when measuring the median salary for all men and women. However, not everyone worries about gender pay gaps. According to a survey from 2021, 54 percent of the female respondents deemed the gender pay gap a real problem, compared to 45 percent of the male respondents.

This is the proportion of children in the area at expected level in each of the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) within the Literacy area of the assessment. Literacy is one of the 4 specific areas of learning and covers the ELGs: Comprehension, Word reading, and Writing.

The early years foundation stage (EYFS) profile is a teacher assessment of children’s development at the end of the EYFS, specifically the end of the academic year in which a child turns 5. This is typically the summer term of reception year. The EYFSP was introduced in 2012/13.

As part of wider reforms to the EYFS, the EYFS profile was revised significantly in September 2021. Changes included revisions to all 17 ELGs across the 7 areas of learning, the removal of ‘exceeding’ assessment band, and the removal of statutory local authority moderation. It is therefore not possible to directly compare 2021/22 assessment outcomes with earlier years. The 2019/20 and 2020/21 collections were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teacher assessments cover all schools and early years providers with children registered for government-funded early years provision at the end of the EYFS. These include all state-funded schools and maintained nursery schools, children in private, voluntary and independent (PVI) providers, including childminders. Excludes a child who has not been assessed due to long periods of absence, for instance a prolonged illness, or arrived too late in the summer term for teacher assessment to be carried out, or for an exemption.

Local authority district data are based on matching the postcode of the school or provider to the National Statistics Postcode Lookup (NSPL). Percentages may not sum to 100.

Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.

The British Children's Play Survey was conducted in April 2020 with 1,919 parents living in Britain who had a child aged 5 to 11 years. The sample were approximately nationally representative and the data were weighted to the national profile of all adults aged 18+, including those without internet access. The data were weighted based on age, gender, social class, region and level of education. Parents completed the Children's Play Scale, along with measures that asked about independent mobility, parent attitudes to risk in play, children's organised activities, screen time, mental health and holidays along with questions about respondent's mental health and some questions related to COVID-19. A series of questions were also asked about socio-demographic and geographic characteristics.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (December 2022) almost all of the raw survey data has been included. For this reason, the study was moved from Open to Safeguarded access (UKDS registration required). Some data are not provided in order to protect participants' identity or because it is still being analysed for publication by the authors. Updates may be made to the published dataset as further papers are published.

According to a survey conducted in 2022, the share of internet users in the United Kingdom who had consumed e-books illegally via either a mix of legal and illegal sources or exclusively illegal sources was 24 percent in the three months running to the survey. This was up by 10 percent from the previous year.

This statistic shows the share of children who participated in reading and writing activities in the last year in England, according to annual surveys conducted between 2008/09 and 2019/20. Over this period, levels of involvement in reading and writing activities have generally decreased. In 2019/20, around 81 percent of children aged 5-10 years took part in reading and writing activities.

The Surrey Communication and Language in Education Study (SCALES) is the first UK population study of language development and disorder at school entry. The study is funded by Wellcome and the ESRC and involves more than 180 schools across Surrey UK.

This longitudinal study was initially established to determine (1) the extent to which 'Specific' Language Impairment (SLI) was prevalent in a population (as opposed to clinically ascertained) sample at school entry, and (2) the impact of language impairment on other aspects of development and how these patterns of development change over time. A second phase of SCALES aimed to test theoretical accounts of the developing relationship between language and social, emotional, and mental health during the transition to secondary school. Unfortunately, the final testing wave coincided with the global Covid-19 pandemic which impacted data collection due to school closures and lockdown.

The Surrey Communication and Language in Education Study: Intensive Data T2-T5, 2012-2020 concerns the intensive cohort who were assessed at four time points: Year 1, Year 3, Year 6, and Year 8. The dataset includes 528 variables assessing language, literacy, cognition, executive function and social, emotional and behavioural well-being.

Further information about the study can be found on the UCL Literacy, Language and Communication Laboratory SCALES project website.

This data shows Education Attainment, at Early Years Foundation Stage, Year 1 Phonics assessments, and Key Stage 1 teacher assessments. Numbers and percentages of pupils are shown by gender. A brief outline of the attainment levels: • A Good level of Development at Foundation Stage means children achieving at least the expected level within the following areas of learning: communication and language; physical development; personal, social and emotional development; literacy; and mathematics. • Year 1 Phonics attainment is based on the percentage of pupils meeting the standard of the Phonics decoding screening check. • Key Stage 1 attainment is based on the percentage of pupils achieving the expected standard or above in each of Reading, Writing and Maths Teacher Assessments. • Key Stage 1 attainment is not available in 2024 as this has now become non-statutory and optional. Data has been included up until 2023. More information about the Early Years Foundation Stage and Primary Key Stage 1 curriculums is available on the Department for Education (DfE) School Curriculum website; a link to that is included along with the dataset. Data is included for Wards, Lower Super Output Areas (LSOA), Districts, and Lincolnshire. The data has been aggregated based on pupil postcode and only includes those pupils living and educated within Lincolnshire. If you want Lincolnshire and District aggregations based on those pupils that are educated within Lincolnshire, irrespective of where they live; then please see the Department for Education Statistics website and School Performance Tables (links to these included as Resources accompanying these datasets). Data is suppressed where appropriate 5 persons and below (this may be shown by missing data). That and any unmatched postcodes may mean numbers for small areas might not add up exactly to figures shown for larger areas. This data is updated annually. Data source: Lincolnshire County Council, Performance Services – Schools Performance. For any enquiries about this publication please contact: schoolperformancedata@lincolnshire.gov.uk Please note: Foundation Stage Profile National data for Early Years Foundation Stage Profile results are published via: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/early-years-foundation-stage-profile-results – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk) There have been changes to the Foundation Stage Profile even though the overall measure of “Good Level of Development” appears to be the same. The DfE offer the following phrase via the above link: “This is the third publication since the 2021/22 EYFS reforms were introduced in September 2021. As part of those reforms, the EYFS profile was significantly revised. It is therefore not possible to directly compare 2023/24, 2022/23 & 2021/22 assessment outcomes with earlier years. The 2019/20 and 2020/21 data collections were cancelled due to coronavirus (COVID-19).” Further details on the changes to the early years foundation stage (EYFS) framework can be found via the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-the-early-years-foundation-stage-eyfs-framework/changes-to-the-early-years-foundation-stage-eyfs-framework - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) Phonics and Key Stage 1 National data for Phonics and Key Stage 1 results are published via: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/key-stage-1-and-phonics-screening-check-attainment – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk) It is worth noting that there have been drops in attainment seen nationally. The DfE offer the following commentary via the link above: “These are the third phonics screening check and second key stage 1 attainment statistics since 2019, after assessments were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. These statistics cover the attainment of year 1 and year 2 pupils who took these assessments in summer 2024 (phonics) or summer 2023 (key stage 1). These pupils experienced disruption to their learning during the pandemic.”

This dataset is a cross-sectional survey collected from two provinces in Pakistan (Punjab) and India (State of Gujarat). The sample included both urban and rural parts of the two countries. The dataset mainly looks at children’s learning and general life experiences in the early years of childhood (at ages 4 to 8). We assessed 1,129 children on tasks of basic numeracy, literacy, and social-emotional learning using a standardised measure of assessment, implemented at two points in time with a gap of 12 months. Also, we collected data on household characteristics, children's learning performance and a parents' survey of children's activities and learning outcomes.School enrolment of around 80% in India and Pakistan is lower than targets associated with Sustainable Development Goal 4 and functional levels of literacy and numeracy are inadequate even for many young children who are enrolled in school. This project, based on 1,500 young children from one province in Pakistan and one state in India, seeks to examine patterns of enrolment of children and school readiness by socio-economic group, family background, urban / rural locations and individual characteristics such as gender, disability and health. Attendance and progress at school will be analysed over one year, demonstrating how much of a difference school attendance can make to children’s cognitive development and health outcomes. The project aims to collect in-depth information from families and communities on their views of schools and any barriers to attendance, and conduct a systematic review of the evidence. The findings are expected to have policy implications on school enrolment, attendance and retention.

The team's final project report was published on 20 September 2022, and a foreword has been authored by Ziauddin Yousafzai (Malala Yousafzai’s father).

This data could be used with CiteSpace to carry out a metric analysis of 9,492 health literacy papers included in Web of Science through mapping knowledge domains. The data processing is as follows: Publications with the subject term “Health Literacy” were searched in WoS, and the search was further optimized by the following conditions: language = English; document type = article + review. The number of search results was 9,888 (downloaded on September 19, 2020). Therefore, the period of the citing articles in our study is from January 1, 1995, to September 19, 2020. During the deduplication process, we excluded duplicate publications and articles with missing key fields, such as abstracts, keywords and references, resulting in 9,429 valid records for inclusion.

Children’s self-report of their access to information about COVID-19.

This data collection comprises seven experimental studies that assesses the effects of self-referential cues (e.g., the personal pronoun ‘you’) on children’s learning and processing. There are three experiments focused on numeracy processing in word problems, three experiments looking at literacy processing in close reading tasks, and a final experiment exploring the learning of new information.

In the numeracy experiments, we presented 7- to 11-year-old children with arithmetic word problems (e.g., “Eve has 5 apples. Jane has 2 apples more than Eve. How many marbles does Eve have?”), half of which replaced one character name with the self-referent pronoun ‘you’. In the first two experiments, we found that when problems included the self-referent pronoun, they tended to elicit faster and more accurate responses from children. Further, these effects were most pronounced in difficult conditions (e.g., in subtraction rather than addition problems, and when wording is inconsistent rather than consistent with the operation required). We followed up these behavioural experiments with an eye-tracking study, monitoring the length of time that gaze was fixated on specific words within the mathematical word problems. Fixation times showed that children spent significantly less time looking at self-referent pronouns than those referring to another person. This suggests that the effects of self-referent pronouns arise because self-cues facilitate the processing of relevant information, reducing working memory load in problem-solving.

In the literacy studies, we tested the effects of self-pronouns on text processing in 9- to 11-year-old children, in the context of close reading tasks. Across three experiments, we trialled different types of passages and questions, different numbers of characters, and different positions of the self-pronoun, as well as presenting questions with the close reading text present or absent onscreen. Findings were mixed, with some initial evidence that self-pronouns improved children’s engagement, especially when positioned first. However, these effects have not been found consistently across experiments and conditions, suggesting that self-cues are not a reliable method of enhancing performance on close reading literacy tasks.

Finally, in our learning study we tested the effects of three encoding conditions on 9- to 11-year-old children’s ability to remember new second language vocabulary (Japanese kanji for common nouns). Participants practised the kanji by drawing them with another person, drawing them with themselves, or including them in a drawing of a relevant autobiographical memory. Participants’ memory for the kanji did not differ significantly across conditions. They then watched either a video conveying the educational value of self-referencing or a control video, before learning more kanji. Free recall data revealed an interaction, with the self-referencing video producing an advantage only for those previously asked to draw themselves without an autobiographical cue. These findings suggest that while self-referencing was not effective at enhancing learning, it has the potential to support memory when scaffolded.

Together, these experiments suggest that including self-referent cues has mixed effects in educational contexts. For tasks that have a high working memory load such as numerical problem solving, self-cues can be very effective at enhancing task performance, reducing the processing demands of relevant information. However, for longer forms of processing such as close reading and learning tasks, self-referential cues and strategies did not reliably enhance performance above other techniques without scaffolding. This suggests that self-referencing cues should be applied in education, but only within specific contexts in which they can be used to ease the working memory load of difficult tasks.

Children demonstrate learning by encoding and retrieving from memory. Therefore, it is essential that we understand the mechanisms that support memory and hence how we can support learning. The 'self-reference effect' (SRE) has shown that individuals are better at remembering information about themselves than information relating to others. Most research exploring the extent of the SRE has been conducted in a laboratory setting. To determine the benefits for learning, this project explores the potential uses of self-referencing in the classroom.

In the project, SREs are examined across literacy processing, numeracy processing and learning tasks. Self-referencing manipulations are applied in text (e.g., using pronouns 'you' or 'I' instead of a character name) in close reading tasks and maths problems (e.g., You have 3 balls. Bob has 2 more balls than you. How many balls does Bob have?"), as well as learning new information (e.g., draw a picture of yourself with this Japanese kanji). The project aimed to provide systematic research into the efficacy of these manipulations, and to test their underlying mechanisms.

Three potential mechanisms for the impact of self-referencing on learning have been proposed: the application of self-knowledge, attention and working memory load. The self-knowledge framework is a particularly extensive and accessible relative to other knowledge in memory, so can be used to enrich and organise new information, providing multiple routes to successful retrieval. However, there may also be an important role for attention and this has been explored to a lesser extent with regards to learning. Self-cues are difficult to ignore, and this may provide a mechanism whereby the children are engaged in the material to be learned for longer intervals. Finally, working memory, a type of short-term memory that encompasses both storage and processing, may also be affected by self-reference cues. For example, when personal pronouns are included in literacy and numeracy tasks, it reduces the number of referents or things to be remembered.

This projects tests the effect of self-referencing on attentional capacity, working memory load, task engagement and memory support as a necessary step in the successful translation of self-referencing to the classroom. The experimental findings have been used to create resources for teachers and educators (see https://selflab.co.uk/education/).

Vocabulary knowledge is crucial for accessing the school curriculum and for performance on school assessments. It is also strongly influenced by a child’s exposure to language in the home and disadvantages in knowledge are apparent at school-entry. Vocabulary knowledge has a lasting influence on academic achievement that persists into secondary school and disadvantages are only partially ameliorated by teacher-directed instruction. Reading ability is also crucial for academic achievement, but contrasts with vocabulary as a skill in which initial disadvantages tend to fade over time. We followed primary-aged pupils from the Aston Literacy Project (a large longitudinal study of reading from school-entry to late-primary) during the critical but under-researched transition to secondary school. This data set includes information on children’s vocabulary, word reading and reading comprehension at the and of primary school and the beginning of secondary school. The data were used to examine reading and vocabulary development across the primary-secondary school transition.

Vocabulary knowledge is crucial for accessing the school curriculum and for performance on school assessments. It is also strongly influenced by a child’s exposure to language in the home and disadvantages in knowledge are apparent at school-entry. Vocabulary knowledge has a lasting influence on academic achievement that persists into secondary school and disadvantages are only partially ameliorated by teacher-directed instruction. Reading ability is also crucial for academic achievement, but contrasts with vocabulary as a skill in which initial disadvantages tend to fade over time. We followed primary-aged pupils from the Aston Literacy Project (a large longitudinal study of reading from school-entry to late-primary) during the critical but under-researched transition to secondary school. We examined whether the transition to secondary school and whether participant level characteristics such as SES affected their vocabulary and reading development during this time.
For data collected from this sample between 2011-2016 see: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852671

The European questionnaire on Information and Communication Technologies Data reveals that there exists a disparity between the internet usage of people according to gender. This disparity although present in most countries, differs widely in its severity.

By 2020, 76 percent of male internet users in the United Kingdom used the internet to access online new sites, newspapers, or news magazines. Among women this share was slightly lower and amounted to 72 percent. Since 2013, 13 percent more men and 19 percent more women replied that they used the internet for the purpose of keeping up to date with current news and events.

These data were generated from Professional Doctorate research set within two UK universities that explored how university lecturers construct their knowledge of information and digital literacy.

Workshops were convened with an expert group of librarians, learning technologists, and lecturers with the aim of forming a multi-professional understanding of the digital competencies relevant to university lecturers through an information literacy lens. Workshop materials and completed worksheets are included in the dataset.

A further interview phase of the research was conducted with eight lecturers. Pseudonymised interview transcripts are provided along with codes I generated from the data.

Utilising a contextual constructionism methodology (Nichols, 2015), my Professional Doctorate research aimed to explore the competencies that university lecturers require to be digitally competent. I began by investigating how digital competence is associated to information literacy, as related to university lecturers, by using a framework as a lens.

I then convened workshops with an expert group of librarians, learning technologists, and lecturers, key stakeholders in information and digital literacy, and curricula and lecturer development. The workshops aimed to form a multi-professional understanding of the digital competencies relevant to university lecturers through an information literacy lens.

To further my understanding of how university lecturers construct their knowledge of information and digital literacy, I undertook in-depth interviews with eight lecturers with the aim of better understanding the workshop data. Using a thematic analysis method, I concluded that lecturer construction of digital competence is still at an embryonic stage. Most lecturers struggled with the language of digital competence and information literacy as described in frameworks.

Basic demographic information of the participants.

The Multilingualism and Multiliteracy (MultiLila) project was a four-year research study (2016 –2020).It aimed to examine whether a match or mismatch between the child’s home language(s) and the school language affect learning outcomes while at the same time taking into other factors that can affect a child’s performance on basic school skills and more advanced, problem-solving and reasoning skills. Specifically, socioeconomic status, school site, urban vs. rural location and differences between two urban sites (Delhi and Hyderabad) were considered when evaluating learning outcomes in the project’s tasks. The project also sought to understand whether children who use more than one language in the home or children who live in linguistically highly diverse environments have better cognitive skills than children in monolingual or less diverse contexts. A variety of quantitative and qualitative data were collected over a period of four years. The data include children’s performance on the fourteen different tasks of literacy, numeracy, oral language, verbal reasoning, and cognitive tasks mentioned above. In addition, we collected data from the surveys and questionnaires used for teacher and head-teacher interviews.

This innovative project examines the causes of low educational outcomes in schools in India where many children fail to achieve basic literacy and numeracy levels, while dropout rates, affecting girls more than boys, are very high. A starting point of this research is that bilingualism and multilingualism have revealed cognitive advantages and good learning skills in children raised in western societies. Multilingualism is the norm in India. However, rather than enjoying cognitive and learning advantages, multilingual Indian children show low levels of basic learning skills including critical thinking and problem-solving. This project is innovative in seeking to disentangle the causes of this paradox. The project builds on Tsimpli's large scale (600K) EU-funded THALES bilingualism project which assessed cognitive and language abilities of 700+ children in five different countries, expanding this project into numeracy, critical thinking and problem solving in multilingual children which are key elements in the Indian context. The PI and co-Is have been preparing this application for the last two years in conjunction with the current project partners and consultants in India with 20k. funding from the British Council and 3k funding from the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism at the University of Reading. The PI was invited to take part in a Roundtable discussion on Multilingual Education at the British Council in September 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXMhAzgcdzM).The applicants discussed key questions from charities and schools and obtained advice from a range of educational and linguistics experts in Delhi and Hyderabad and visited different schools in both cities in 2014-15. The key question this project seeks to address is to explore how the complex dynamics of social, economic and geographical contexts affect the delivery of quality multilingual education in India. The growth of literacy and numeracy in children is constrained by complex interactions between elements of the education system, the context in which they are embedded, and the dynamics operating within that system. By conducting research among children living in urban slums in Delhi and Hyderabad as well as in remote rural areas of Bihar where food deprivation, low sanitation, poverty and migration make school attendance and education hard to maintain, the project focuses on structural and language inequalities affecting educational quality in India. Language inequalities arise because a large number of children in India are deprived of receiving mother-tongue support, being instructed only in the regional language and English, often from teachers with poor teaching qualifications and practices or limited knowledge of the language of instruction too. Teaching practices in India are teacher- and textbook-centred with detrimental effects on the development of critical thinking and problem solving abilities. These skills are fundamental in every learning process including numeracy and the understanding of mathematics. The method of this study is highly innovative in a number of ways. A combination of several tasks and questionnaires will address the role of several factors on learning outcomes. Each child's language, literacy and numeracy skills will be evaluated at two time points with a one year interval between them. This design is known to provide reliable findings on the development of learning rather than only on knowledge itself allowing future interventions to build on these findings to ensure improved outcomes. This study will provide policymakers and practitioners with concrete ideas on how to improve learning outcomes in the multilingual education context of India. It will offer a crucial understanding of how these ideas will translate to their specific contexts and institutions in India across regions and states. At the same time, the project will also inform UK stakeholders about educating bilingual children in the UK.

The Family Case Studies Images dataset forms part of Children, Technology and Play (2019-2020), an 8-month co-produced study by academics from the University of Sheffield and University of Cape Town, South Africa, the LEGO Foundation and Dubit.

The study explored the contemporary play environments of children to identify the ways in which their play is shaped by technology, examine the relationship between digital play, learning and creativity, and explore the role of adults in mediating digital play.

The UK research included case studies of 10 families in Sheffield with focus children aged 3-11. Each was visited 6 times at home and a range of qualitative data collection methods was employed.

This dataset comprises researcher photos, parent photos (shared with the research team), child photos (many on the GoPro cameras used in the project), and photographed copies of child drawings and play journals, plus a spreadsheet containing relevant metadata. Personal and school names have been pseudonymised.

The project received ethical approval from the University of Sheffield (no. 028701).

The research tools and other datasets from the study are deposited elsewhere in ORDA and have been brought together in the Children, Technology and Play collection.

According to a survey held in the United Kingdom in March 2020, ** percent of respondents aged 16 years and older typically read physical hardback books, whereas ** percent engaged with physical paperbacks the most. By contrast, just ***** percent said they most typically listened to audiobooks, and ** percent said they did not read or listen to books at all.