The Literacy Trust in the UK is an organisation that works to document literacy levels, and improve literacy across the UK and from this year, they are using the Experian date expertise to map England and create literacy rankings.
It’s the most comprehensive UK study ever done on literacy and uses data such as levels of education, income and employment to highlight issues and make comparisons in creating the data.
What the literacy scores show is that literacy problems create the socioeconomic problems connected to the list above and that literacy problems are becoming a nationwide issue. 86% of all English constituencies have at least one ward with urgent literacy need and that low literacy levels aren’t actually restricted to regions with low income and social deprivation.
Of all the English regions, Middlesbrough is shown as having the greatest literacy need, followed by Barking, Hackney South, and Shoreditch, Liverpool, and Sheffield. All of the 50 highlighted constituencies with the greatest literacy need came from either cities or towns surrounding urban areas, and London was particularly shown up as a problem area for literacy.
MPs for each area have been given an information pack containing the literacy vulnerability score and analysis for each constituency with access to the full report across parliament. You can access the report here.
What is clear is that literacy is a problem in the UK and other parts of the Western world with easy access to literature, and this is a problem that must be tackled.
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