International Literacy Day
The idea to establish the International Literacy Day appeared in September 1966 at the World Conference of Ministers of Education, held in Tehran. The topic of this conference was solving the problem of eradicating illiteracy. September 8 was chosen as Literacy Day, and UNESCO began marking the International Literacy Day the following year, 1966.
Literacy problems at the global level
The International Literacy Day was initiated by UNESCO to remind the international community of the challenge facing the world on a global level, ie the problem of the status of literacy and adult education. Statistics say that globally there are about 774 million illiterate people, which is about 16% of the total population of the world, aged 15 and over. Most of that population are women. According to UNESCO, the lowest literacy rate is in Mali at 23%.
Literacy in Serbia
According to official data, the illiteracy / incomplete literacy rate in Serbia is slightly less than 14%, or about 850 thousand inhabitants, which is slightly lower than the average rate globally. This figure refers to the part of the population that is without a single day of school or with only a few grades of primary school. There are slightly more than 165,000 completely illiterate people.
About 11% of people in Serbia, or about 650,000 inhabitants of Serbia, have higher education. A big problem in the future for Serbia may be computer education, where about 50% of the population of Serbia is illiterate. Also, worrying results have recently come from PISA research (the largest test of student achievement globally). Namely, the results of students from Serbia are worse from year to year and below average.
We have already written about the pace of education and literacy in Serbia. You may be interested in the following articles:
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