Literacy in Lithuania
ENLithuania participated in IEA’s PIRLS (4th graders reading comprehension) in 2001, 2006 and 2011, and in OECD’s PISA (15 year-olds’ reading literacy) in 2009 and 2012. This means it is possible to describe the changes over time in average reading proficiency, according to different characteristics of the readers, and to compare relative reading levels of proficiencies for different age groups. Lithuania performed below the EU average both in PIRLS 2011 (528 vs 535 EU-average) and to a larger extent in PISA 2012 (477 vs 489 EU average). The performance in PIRLS gradually decreased between the first and the third cycles of the study: - 6 points between 2001 and 2006, and the performance dropped by 15 score points between 2006 and 2011 whereas it remained largely unchanged across the European countries. Conversely, an increase (+ 9 score points) was observed in PISA between 2009 and 2012, the two only cycles Lithuania was involved in. The proportion of pupils who can be considered as low-performing readers was almost the same as the EU average, both in PIRLS (21 % vs 20 %) and in PISA. This proportion of low-performing readers tends to decrease among 15-year olds, it was near 25% in 2009. These low-performing students can read simple texts, retrieve explicit information, or make straightforward inferences, but they are not able to deal with longer or complex texts, and are unable to interpret beyond what is explicitly stated in the text. The proportion of top-performing readers is less than in EU countries on average both in PIRLS (6 % vs 9 % in EU) and in PISA (3.3 % vs 7 %). The gap according to the pupils’ socioeconomic background was similar to the EU average in PIRLS (76). In PISA, it was somewhat lower than the EU average (84 vs 89 on average). However, the indices of socioeconomic background are not the same in PIRLS and PISA, so the comparison should be taken with caution.Moreover, the percentage of students with a migrant background was very low in Lithuania (1.7 % vs 8.3 % in EU). In Lithuania, 7 % of pupils had parents whose highest level of education was lower secondary or below, compared with an EU average of 18 %. The gap in performance in Lithuania between children of parents with a basic University degree or higher, and those of parents with lower secondary education or below was 76 points, the same as the EU average. Similarly, students in Lithuania scoring in the top quartile on PISA’s measure of economic, social and cultural status achieved a mean score that was higher (by 85 points) than that of students in the bottom quartile. This was below the corresponding EU average of 93 points, indicating a slightly smaller gap in Lithuania. The gap in performance in Lithuania between those who always spoke the language of the test at home and those who sometimes or never did so was 20 points – a little lower than the EU-24 average of 26 points. Eighty-three percent of students in Lithuania ‘always’ spoke the language of the PIRLS test at home, compared with 80% on average across the EU-24. Compared with other EU countries, there were relatively few immigrant students in Lithuanian schools (2 %, compared with an EU average of 8 % in PISA 2009). In PISA 2009, immigrant students in Lithuania (described as first or secondgeneration immigrants) had a mean reading literacy score that was significantly lower, by 23 point, than that of native students. The corresponding EU average difference was 39 points. The mean score of the 4 % of students in Lithuania who reported ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’ speaking a home language that was different from the language of the PIRLS 2009 reading was significantly lower, by 34 points, than the mean score of those who reported ‘always’ speaking the language of the test at home. The corresponding EU average difference was 54 points.The gap in performance in favour of girls in PIRLS 2011 overall reading was 18 points. This is above the EU-24 average difference of 12 points. The difference between genders in Lithuania was stable between 2001 and 2011. In PISA 2009, the gender difference in favour of female students in Lithuania (59 points) was greater than the corresponding EU average difference (44). Differences of similar size were observed in PISA 2012. Whereas boys in Lithuania achieved a mean score that was 18 points lower than boys on average across EU countries in 2012, girls in Lithuania achieved a mean score that was just 6 points lower than the average for girls across EU countries, indicating a stronger level of underperformance among boys. Less than one half of students in PIRLS 2011 in Lithuania had access to a computer during reading lessons, and less than one-third used a computer to write stories or other texts at least monthly. While similar to corresponding EU-24 averages, levels of computer use for reading and writing in Lithuania fall well below the levels reported for Nordic countries. Instructional time spent on language and reading in Fourth grade in Lithuania – 649 hours per year – was lower than on average across the EU-24 (850 hours), even though students in Lithuania spent almost 30% of instructional time on instruction on the language of the PIRLS test. In Lithuania, 51 instructional hours per year were spent on reading as part of language, compared with and EU-24 average of 68. Despite spending proportionally less time on language instruction than on average across the EU-24, more students in Lithuania were reported by their teachers to engage more frequently in a range of reading comprehension strategies than on average across the EU-24. However, fewer than one-half of students engaged in higher level strategies such as comparing what they read with experiences they had, and determining the author's perspective or intention.
