Reading literacy is often understood as a basic skill, and it is gaining recognition as the most functional means to educational attainment and individual development. It not only sets a benchmark but also reveals students’ strengths and weaknesses through performance measurement. This paper attempts to investigate sixteen-year-olds’ reading literacy proficiency using a performance band system in reporting their ‘can’s and ‘cant’s in reading. It drew insights from the Text-Task Respondent Theory of Functional Literacy (White, 2011) and the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson Krathwohl, 2001), where pertinent concepts were drawn to address students’ functional abilities. The study involved a total of 813 sixteen-year-old students representing the northern, southern, central, and east coast regions of Peninsular Malaysia (Penang, Perak, Perlis, Selangor, Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, and Johor). A survey research method was employed to capture cognitive competencies that denoted students’ functional abilities when it came to reading literacy. The study measured the students’ reading literacy attainment based on a proficiency scale spanning on five-band levels. The findings of the present study revealed that the majority of the students attained Band 3, where they demonstrated a moderate understanding of texts and were able to integrate some part of texts to infer meaning. The study provides valuable insights to policymakers, educationists, employers in making data-driven decisions to improve educational outcomes. It also attempts to shed some light on the current pedagogical trends and provide suggestive practices in reading.
Differences in literacy proficiency by educational attainment, young adults aged 16-24
