The data breakdown

Literacy and life chances are closely linked. That’s why Canada’s Indigenous literacy statistics cause so much consternation –

• 45% of Indigenous adults do not have any educational qualifications

• Around 50% of Indigenous people live on-reserve, where there are 50% more high-school dropouts than off-reserve

• 50% of Indigenous people leave secondary school without any qualifications; a figure twice as high as the number of non-Indigenous people

• And in the last decade, 50% of Indigenous households were classed as having ‘serious’ literacy problems.

Rongo H. Wetere Ph.D. ONZM,
Addressing the Literacy Issues of Canada’s Aboriginal Population: A Discussion Paper

It’s unknown how many members of Indigenous communities are diagnosed with dyslexia or a similar learning difference that impacts their reading skills, but when Indigenous communities often experience disparities in healthcare access and schools that serve Indigenous learners may be under-resourced, it’s a safe assumption that they may not be as high as in the rest of Canada’s school-age population.

But why are Indigenous literacy rates so low?

Indigenous adults have some of the lowest literacy levels in Canada. It’s often a product of the unique educational challenges that they grow up with: many Indigenous students are from low-income backgrounds and attend small, rural, low-income schools, where there’s often a support and resource deficit. This can doubly disadvantage those Indigenous learners who come from households where English isn’t the most spoken language, as dedicated English Language Learner support might be outside what their school is able to provide, meaning that literacy skills can slip easily.

There are also identified deficits in data tracking and student progress, which can impede a teacher’s ability to support at the point of need even if those connections are made.

Indigenous literacy factors go deeper into communities too. Learners might find that establishing literacy is difficult due to the lower educational standard of the adults in their family units. Where adults themselves have low literacy, they’re often unable to support, actively participate, and place developmental value on literacy in children and young people’s educational lives. It’s also largely true that in any one Indigenous on-reserve community there are likely to be only a small number of adults who have degrees and provide good educational role models.

History, prejudice and fatalism also pervade the narrative: the job market for Indigenous people may often feel limited in scope, and it can prompt learners to disengage and only foster the skill sets they feel like they’ll need for manual work. It can be a result of in-class sanctions, too: Indigenous learners are more likely to be surveilled and disciplined than their non-Indigenous White peers, and be subject to harsher punishments due to racism and systemic prejudice.

A degree of Indigenous people also adopt a distrustful attitude towards the school system in general after the slew of historic injustices committed against the former students of Canada’s residential schools, and seek to keep schools at arm’s length and exit the education system as early as possible.

Employment and Indigenous literacy

Over the past decade, Indigenous groups have experienced poorer outcomes when it comes to participation and employment than non-Indigenous people of working age.

Canada’s labour market operates on a baseline of high literacy. More than half of the population has been to university, and learners are likely to leave high school with strong reading skills and transcripts. When there’s a high degree of literacy skill in the talent pool, even entry-level or manual roles expect strong reading as a given – meaning it’s often difficult for people with lower-than-average literacy skills to get a foot in the door.

When as many as 140,000 Indigenous people live in remote locations with limited job opportunities, it means that competition is even higher. Many school leavers lack the resources and confidence in their employability to seek out work further afield, especially as 100,000 of those 140,000 live in a location with no link to an urban centre.

Indigenous literacy data is digital literacy data, too

It’s not just about books, either. Literacy paves the way toward digital literacy, and when reading skills fail, digital ones become far harder to develop. The USAY Indigenous Literacy Assessment (2022) found that:

• Only 64% of Indigenous foundational learners felt that they could effectively communicate via digital means

• And a staggering 36% reported that they were unlikely to feel confident on a computer or other digital devices.

Even manual jobs rely on computerised systems today, so a digital Indigenous literacy skills gap on this scale means that it’s even harder to get into work. And far higher proportions of Indigenous adults work in jobs that demand the lowest literacy skills, meaning that even when work is found, salaries are often on the lower end and things like progression or regular hours may not be guaranteed.

And indigenous literacy stats go far further than books and reading…

Environmental data like this helps us understand that low Indigenous literacy rates aren’t just a block of uncomfortable statistics: they’re part of a pipeline. Leaving school with under-developed literacy skills leads to a lack of competitive edge in a job hunt, which leads to lower incomes: the average income in 2016-17 for Indigenous people living on-reserve was $11,299. The national average income for that period was $25,995.

With this in mind, and knowing what we know about the relationship between low literacy and incarceration, it’s likely to be little surprise that Indigenous adults make up 32% of Canada’s overall correctional institution population in 2023.

They’re also vastly over-represented in the homeless population, with the Winnipeg Street Census from 2022 reporting that 68.2% of those surveyed self-identified as Indigenous. These individuals also experienced the most extreme patterns of homelessness, with 89% of the group reporting sleeping in vehicles, tents, abandoned buildings and other public locations as opposed to shelters and community initiatives.

The right assistive technology can break down the Indigenous literacy barrier at its source.

Despite the gloomy number-crunching, it’s not a foregone conclusion that an Indigenous learner with compromised literacy will grow up into an adult with low literacy. These statistics do more than make plain the scale of the difficulties facing learners in Indigenous communities: they help us target our solutions, too.

The data pipeline above demonstrates that educational inequalities are the nucleus of the problem on a generational level. Adults who have a poor educational experience and leave school with low literacy and few qualifications don’t make for the strongest support network and role model system for their own school-age children, and the cycle repeats: as well as facing large levels of under-resourcing in schools, these learners are now also contending with a number of social and cultural factors in their home and community units that make progress in literacy more difficult.

That’s why our reading support solutions need to be simple, user-friendly, and able to make that transition from EdTech in the classroom to personal assistive tech for the home and for work. It

…Luckily, we’re the experts on that.

So boosting Indigenous literacy requires a books-first approach to reading?

Yes! The order of the day is reading technology that supports Indigenous literacy by breaking down the barriers to text on paper. Here’s why:

• Reading from paper (as opposed to from a screen) prompts deeper reading comprehension, which means that literacy skills become easier to foster— making confidence and catching-up easier for those whose reading age might already be behind their chronological age.

• Schools on reservations and in isolated rural communities are often subject to higher levels of material deprivation… meaning that as education goes digital across the country, these places might still be left behind in terms of access to sources of on-screen reading support such as personal tablets and laptops.

• …and paper-based tech like reading pens costs far less than tablets, laptops and in-person reading support, too.

• Computer literacy and confidence often aren’t high in Indigenous demographics, as the USAY Indigenous Literacy Assessment shows us, so reading support that allows learners to build their skills in a familiar format is easier for them to adopt, use, and embed into their everyday learning routines.

• Paper-based reading technologies are often far more portable than on-screen ones, meaning that they’re able to transition far more easily between in-class reading and at-home reading.

Supporting Indigenous literacy with the C-Pen Reader 2!

 
C-Pen Reader 2 is a text-to-speech reading aid that supports readers and helps them build their skills, ready to take on any challenge! It’s as simple as scan, listen and understand – simply move the pen across the page to hear the text read aloud either via the pen’s in-built speaker or their personal headphones.

It’s discreet, meaning that users don’t have to worry about feeling singled out, and there’s a whole host of other features in its support suite that can support educators and learners as they work toward a better standard of literacy together.

From multiple dictionaries, multiple-language support and a word practice and recorder function, it’s practically like having a tutor in your pocket, but for a fraction of the cost, and able to travel between home and the classroom with ease.

And there are zero-storage pens designed to support learners in exams, too!

But don’t just take it from us…

“At Nisichawayasihk Neyo Ohtinwak Collegiate in Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, our students love to use scanning pens as assistive technology for reading. They came highly recommended to us by an Educational Psychologist, so we decided to give them a try!

The results have been amazing. Our students are now experiencing success with their reading and enjoy using the pens. The pens are discreet and also come with headphones which lessen the stigma for classroom use.”

Angela Lavasseur, High School Resource Teacher
Nelson House Education Authority, MB

“Our Post-Secondary and Adult Basic Education students love the independence that the pens can offer while still providing the support they need to access printed content. Using this option to provide exam accommodations allows students to hear the questions as many times as necessary without feeling self-conscious in from of an exam reader.

Having a dictionary on board is especially helpful when encountering unfamiliar vocabulary. The pens have been able to increase the confidence and success of our students.”

Nicole Wagner, Learning Specialist
Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies, SK

Supporting Indigenous literacy in work  

Strengthening reading skills in children and young people means that they go into the workplace more confident and able to take on the challenges that high literacy expectations entail. It also supports them in accessing higher education and developing the digital skills needed to be able to take on complex or clerical jobs, as well as progress up the career ladder.

But what about adults who have already left the school system, who are already in the world of work?

It’s not about a window of opportunity: although the earlier a literacy intervention takes place, the better the outcomes tend to be, text-to-speech reading support still has the power to take the stress out of reading and open the door to a more productive, less stressful working future for employees, as well as reading-heavy roles that might have looked daunting at first.

You can find out more about data-secure devices and workplace support at our Canada Workplace Hub!

Indigenous literacy rates and brighter futures

Indigenous literacy stats are increasing, albeit not in great leaps and bounds: around 42% of on-reserve status First Nations people aged 18 to 24 finished high school in 2016. If we flash forwards to 2021, that figure comes in at just over 52%. For those living off-reserve, the figure hikes from 68% per cent to 73%, so there’s an improvement across both major types of social geography.

Literacy programs in First Nation School Boards are developing too, with some taking cues from Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read public inquiry report, to the acclaim of dyslexia and reading specialists too.

With the right technology that aligns with the unique needs of Indigenous children, young people and adults across Canada it’s possible to support whole communities toward a brighter reading and working futures. To find out more about how reading pens can change the narrative where you are, head over to www.scanningpens.ca, or send us a message via cainfo@scanningpens.com.