The basic skills of adults in Germany are above the international average of the approximately 30 participating countries and have remained stable compared to ten years ago. However, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, PIAAC 2023, shows that there are sometimes strong systematic differences in skills within the population.
The study examined basic skills in three areas: reading literacy, everyday mathematical skills, and adaptive problem-solving skills. Overall, the results show that, compared to the first cycle of the PIAAC study about ten years ago, the skills of adults in Germany have remained unchanged on average. In all three areas, adults in Germany have skills that are significantly above the international average.
Compared to ten years ago, the percentage of people with strong reading and everyday math skills is higher. Conversely, however, the lowest-performing 10% of the German population has strikingly low reading skills in international comparison. These individuals are only able to read individual sentences and very short, simple texts.
In particular, people with low educational attainment show problems in the lower performance range: two-thirds of people with a maximum of a lower secondary school leaving certificate have only low reading and everyday mathematical skills.
Social background is also associated with significant differences in skills. If parents have a low level of education, their children are at a higher risk of having lower skills, even in adulthood. This finding is particularly pronounced for Germany in international comparison and has become even more pronounced over the last ten years.
The difference between the average basic skills of people born in Germany and those born abroad is very high for Germany in international comparison.
Employed persons demonstrate higher basic skills than those who are not employed. Persons with low skills have a higher risk of being unemployed.
Study and implementation
The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, PIAAC, is an international comparative study that examines basic skills in adulthood. The study, coordinated by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was conducted for the second time in 2023 after a period of about ten years. In Germany, PIAAC was led by GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. The study in Germany was financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with the participation of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
Thirty-one countries participated in the study, with over 160,000 randomly selected individuals between the ages of 16 and 65 participating worldwide, including around 4,800 individuals in Germany alone.
Report
Beatrice Rammstedt, Britta Gauly, Sanja Kapidzic, Débora B. Maehler, Silke Martin, Natascha Massing, Silke L. Schneider, Anouk Zabal. (2024). PIAAC 2023. Grundlegende Kompetenzen Erwachsener im internationalen Vergleich. Waxmann Verlag, Münster.
Further information
- PIAAC 2023 results
- Press material
- Example tasks