International research

The research that we have conducted has concentrated on identifying the specific educational needs of the fishing community and to use this knowledge to develop a programme which will benefit the target group and initiate positive change in their lives. Ab-Sea is a themed literacy programme developed specifically for people who are employed in the fishing industry and whom have literacy and numeracy difficulties that such a programme could address.

In 1997 the OECD carried out an international survey which examined how well adults could handle different types of reading andnumeracytasks which crop up regularly in work and in daily life – such as reading timetables, the labels on medicine bottles, or calculating and estimating quantities. This International Adult Literacy Survey concluded that one in four – that is, about half a million -Irish adults have problems with even the simplest literacy tasks, such as reading instructions on a bottle of aspirin. This report was published by the Department of Education and Science, and details the results of the International Adult Literacy Survey which was conducted in 1995 and published by the OECD in 1997.