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Women tend to be better at reading than men but are generally not as good with numbers, a major study has found.
The Adult Literacy and Life Skills report on gender, ethnicity and literacy, released yesterday, aimed to provide an insight into skill levels of men, women and people with different ethnic backgrounds.
It is one of four reports produced since the results from a 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills study showed the literacy skills of about 380,000 adults were so poor they would be unable to determine how to use a fire extinguisher from the instructions written on the bottle.
The latest analysis found women tended to be stronger in "prose literacy" - or the ability to read and understand texts such as news stories, editorials, brochures and instruction manuals - while men tended to be stronger in numeracy. It did not explore the reasons behind the trend.
However, the results were mirrored in data from a study of 15-year-olds - called Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA - also released yesterday, which showed girls had higher literacy on average than boys, while boys had higher numeracy.
In the adult study, known as ALL, both sexes had similar levels of problem-solving skills.
Higher literacy and numeracy skills were linked with higher incomes for both sexes but men's mean income was higher than that of women with the same skill level.
A Ministry of Education spokesman said the findings showed a generally improving picture and work was under way to address areas of need.
"ALL results highlight that 43 per cent of adults were at level 1 or 2 out of five proficiency levels. The significant expansion in adult literacy programmes announced in this year's Budget is targeted at improving the skills of this group."
