Attainment of Baseline and Highest Levels of Literacy Among Slovene Students According to PISA Study Results

Mojca Štraus and Neja Markelj

Summary:  The recent PISA results published in December 2010 opened up a debate on Slovene students’ proficiency in reading, and mathematical and scientific literacy. The study showed that the 15-yearold Slovene children had lower than average reading scores in comparison to their counterparts in the OECD and the EU. In this paper, data from 2006 and 2009 are used to identify the percentage of 15-year-old Slovene students in the first grade of upper-secondary education in Slovenia who are proficient at the highest levels of literacy as well as the percentage of students not reaching the baseline levels. As expected, the highest levels of proficiency were attained mostly by students on academic programs and a very small percentage of students on professional programs. Attainment of baseline proficiency was a problem at least in one area for a quarter of the students on professional programs, three quarters of students on the middle level vocational programs, and for almost all students on the lower level vocational programs. Moreover, in the lower vocational programs, more than 60 % of students failed to attain baseline proficiencies in any of the three areas.