Performance differences between learners from majority and minority populations have been repeatedly examined in educational data. These differences are often consequences of socioeconomic and educational inequalities that are reflected in many aspects of adults’ lives. This section relates the overall performance of adults with a number of important background and demographic characteristics.
A few points about the characteristics of these adults should be restated before examining these relationships. While the AEPS and ALL household samples both covered adults ranging in age between 16 and 65 years, they differed in a number of important characteristics as mentioned earlier in this chapter. AEPS adults reported that they enrolled in adult education programs for a variety of reasons. Often, they enrolled because they were unable to finish their secondary education and wanted to earn a certificate or diploma. In other cases, they enrolled in adult education programs as a result of an incompatibility between their skills and the skills required by the labor market. Another common reason was a lack of English skills resulting from immigration from non-English speaking countries. Regardless, this diverse context is important to consider as it most likely affected the results found in the survey data.
Gender and Skills
Gender equality has become an essential characteristic and an objective of many educational systems. This concept has been expanded from education to labor markets, where large gender gaps still exist. This section compares gender differences in skill levels and background characteristics for the general population in the ALL survey and the adult learners in the AEPS Learner Survey.
Chapter 2 explored gaps in literacy and numeracy skills between adult males and females for the Learner Survey and showed that gender differences for any of the three scales were quite small. These same results were found for the ALL survey in prose and document literacy, while on the numeracy scale males had an average score that was 16 points higher than females.
Differences between males and females within the ALL and AEPS populations were very small. However, much larger differences were found within gender across populations, due to the overall higher performance of the ALL population. The smallest differences were found in document literacy, with males in the ALL population performing 43 points higher than AEPS males, and females in the ALL population performing 40 points higher than AEPS females. The largest differences existed in numeracy where males in the ALL population performed 64 points higher than AEPS males and females in the ALL population performed 52 points higher than AEPS females (see Table 3.2).
The limited gender differences in performance for these adult populations does not mean there were no gender-related differences found in other areas of the two surveys. Figure 3.3 shows aspects of labor market participation for males and females in both populations. As the figure demonstrates, gender differences in employment status were larger between populations than within populations. As a result of characteristics of the AEPS population, employment rates were higher in the ALL population, with 16 percent more males and 23 percent more females reporting that they were employed. Gender differences in the intensity of employment were also larger between the two populations. Fourteen percent more males than females in each population reported that they held full-time employment during the
Chapter 3
year prior to the survey. On the other hand, within gender, 30 percent more males and 30 percent more females from the ALL population reported that they held full- time employment during that period.
These differences in status and intensity of employment were found in a context where males and females reported similar reasons for attending adult education programs. In the AEPS population, 39 percent of both males and females attended these programs to obtain a better job, and 9 percent of males and 6 percent of females attended because classes were required for their current job. Eleven percent more AEPS females than males reported they were attending adult education programs to help their children with their homework.
Figure 3.3
Gender and labor force participation, AEPS and ALL
40 50 60 70 80 100
Percentage of adults Percentage of adults
40 50 60 70 80 100 Employed or self-employed Unemployed or looking for work
During the past 12 months, worked mostly
full time
During the past 12 months, worked mostly part time 30 30 20 20 10 10 0 0
ALL – Men ALL – Women AEPS – Men AEPS – Women 90 Employment status Intensity of employment 90
1
Labor market participation
1. Missing AEPS data: For full-time and part-time employment missing data reached 23.2 percent for men and 36.7 percent for women.
Gender differences in annual income represent another aspect that is often emphasized by research and frequently covered by the media. It is often noted that wages or salaries tend to be correlated with educational attainment. The first panel of Figure 3.4 shows that males and females in ALL did not differ in educational attainment, with less than one percent difference across all levels of education. Despite this, there were large gender differences in reported personal income. The second panel of Figure 3.4 shows there were larger percentages of males who reported receiving higher salaries while more females reported receiving lower salaries. For
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Figure 3.4
Gender, educational attainment and average annual salary, ALL
Percentage of adults, ALL Percentage of adults, ALL
0 50 0 50 40 40 30 30 20 20 10 10 Male Female
Highest level of education Less than
high school High school College or more More than high school Less than $30,000 $30,000 to $40,000 $40,000 to $50,000 $50,000 to $60,000 $60,000 to $80,000 More than $80,000 Percentage of adults, ALL Percentage of adults, ALL
0 50 0 50 40 40 30 30 20 20 10 10 Male Female
Average annual salary
The direct causes of gender differences are complex and are likely to be related to a combination of reasons ranging from social and labor market characteristics to particular family expectations. The purpose of this section was to highlight the small gender differences in performance and educational attainment for these two populations of adults, but also note that gender differences existed in other areas.
Chapter 3
Age and Skills
The wide range of ages represented in the adult population complicate the relationship between age and performance. Additional aspects also impact this relationship, including demographic characteristics (e.g., educational and professional paths) as well as physiological characteristics (e.g., cognitive development and aging). This section examines a range of age groups that include adults between the ages of:
•
16 to 25 (38 percent of the AEPS population and 21 percent of the ALL population)•
26 to 35 (25 percent of the AEPS population and 21 percent of the ALL population)•
36 to 45 (19 percent of the AEPS population and 24 percent of the ALL population)•
46 to 55 (11 percent of the AEPS population and 21 percent of the ALL population); and•
56 to 65 (4 percent of the AEPS population and 14 percent of the ALL population).48Overall, the AEPS population was younger than the adult population in the ALL. While over a third of the AEPS learners were ages 25 or younger, only 21 percent of adults in the ALL population were in this age range. Consequently, the opposite was true for older age groups where 35 percent of adults in the general population were ages 46 or older while in the adult learner population less than half that percentage fell into that age category. This difference might relate to the fact that the 46 and older age group is comprised of adults who are likely to be in stable work situations or preparing for retirement, and are expected to have already acquired the skills necessary for the current labor market. However, the 15 percent of adults over the age of 46 who are attending adult education programs may be doing so for a number of reasons. Demographic changes also seem to be playing a role as approximately half of these adults over age 46 are enrolled in ESL classes while one- third are enrolled in Adult Basic Education (ABE).
The relationship between age and performance was not consistent across populations. A negative relationship existed for the AEPS population with two large differences in performance noted for the second youngest and oldest age groups (see Table 3.3). A difference of 21 points on the prose literacy scale was found between the first and the second age groups (i.e., between ages 16 to 25 and 26 to 35) and a similar difference of 27 points was found between the two oldest groups (i.e., ages 46 to 55 and 56 to 65). Similar findings occurred on the document literacy and numeracy scales. Within the ALL population, performance was more consistent across age groups showing a decrease in performance only between the two oldest groups: from 10 points in prose literacy to 14 points in document literacy.
The gaps in performance between adults in the top and bottom percentiles varied both within and across populations. Within populations, these gaps increased with age showing a wider variability in performance for older groups. In the AEPS population, the difference in performance gaps between age groups was largest in prose literacy where the gap for the oldest group was 44 points wider than the gap
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population but with a smaller difference of 13 points on the prose literacy scale for the same two groups of adults (see Table 3.3). Across populations, more variability in performance was found for adult learners in the AEPS population for every age group. For example, the gap in performance for adults between ages 46 to 55 was 38 points wider for the population of adult learners.
Figure 3.5 shows distributions of learners across skill levels and age groups. Each panel represents a scale. Results for the general population of adults (i.e., ALL) are presented to the left side of the vertical axis, while the results for adults in AEPS are presented to the right side of the vertical axis.
The percentages of adults performing in each of the age groups were more similar in ALL (e.g., smaller differences among the lengths of the bars within each level) than in AEPS. The negative relationship between performance and age was more apparent in AEPS. There were larger percentages of older adults performing at lower levels of skills, with slightly larger percentage of adults from younger groups performing at Levels 2 and 3. However, the average lower performance of the AEPS population needs to be considered when interpreting these results also. This relationship remained in ALL for lower levels of skills and differed in higher levels— smaller percentages of adults from both the youngest (i.e., 16 to 25) and oldest (i.e., 56 to 65) age groups performed at Levels 4 and 5.
Some conclusions can be drawn from these relationships. First, the negative relationship between age and performance is consistent with findings from previous studies of adults (i.e., IALS, ALL, and NAAL; NCES 2005; OECD and Statistics Canada 2000, 2005). Explanations of these previous findings have included (a) the effects of aging on the cognitive performance of older adults, (b) younger adults having received more recent and extended schooling, and (c) the finding that fluid intelligence may decrease with age causing older adults to have more difficulties in dealing with complex tasks (Douchemane and Fontaine 2003; OECD and Statistics Canada 2000, 2005). Second, the larger performance variation for older age groups may be related to the “accumulation of differing life experiences” in association with demographic characteristics of the AEPS population (OECD and Statistics Canada 2005, 43). Among these characteristics, those that are related to immigration could be having a stronger influence on performance in the AEPS population. For example, the AEPS population has three times more non-native adults whose mother tongue was not English.
These findings are, by themselves, important as adult education programs are reaching segments of the adult population, particularly younger learners, most in need of education credentials and English language and literacy skills. The acquisition of such skills may contribute to additional opportunities including jobs with better pay and further opportunities for ongoing training and advancement. Access to these types of jobs and their associated benefits will become increasingly more challenging and more important in today’s labor market.
Chapter 3
Age groups 16 to 25 26 to 35 36 to 45 46 to 55 56 to 65
Percentage ALL 21.0% 20.9% 23.5% 21.0% 13.7%
of adults AEPS 37.9% 25.0% 19.3% 11.1% 4.3%
Figure 3.5
Age and skills on the prose literacy, document literacy and numeracy scales, ALL and AEPS
Skill levels 0 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 80 20 40 60
Prose literacy Document literacy Numeracy
0 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 80 20 40 60 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4/5
Percentage Percentage Percentage
Percentage Percentage Percentage
ALL AEPS ALL AEPS ALL AEPS