If more than 80% are succeeding that is a far cry from "grade 4's can't read,
Mr Century,
And what livelihood to you envisage both the 80% & the 20& to enter into in another 20 years ?
My guess is much of the 80% will be absorbed by the public service & public funded enterprise & public fund draining & most of the 20% will be on welfare.
A very small %age from both will be engaged in meaningful, revenue producing employment in the private sector. That, to me is not a good prospect.

Dear individual,
I apologise as my implications may have been unclear. Let me state it clearly- The 20% referred to do not exist in the "I cannot read category". Those students simply scored lower than the benchmark, on a sliding scale, in a single test, in a small sample size (6,000 out of 280,000 year 4s). Look at the NAPLAN data I presented. It (again a single test, but this time taken by the majority of Australian students in a year level) paints a different picture than the negative one subscribed to for reading ability.
You now raise the issue of this PIRLS test's results (reminder- a test taken by a small representative number of school students, not all students) on the prospect of future livelihoods. Apart from the misreading of the percentages (because it was a small sample size, not like the NAPLAN which is virtually all students in a year level), I can tell you right now, that mindset needs to change regardless. In the future it won't matter if you can read or write to get a job, because our understanding of economic models needs to change. Our literacy numbers are good but large numbers of literate people won't be able to get a job. The jobs won't exist in the manner/numbers they do now (or have in the past). You only have to look at the demise of manufacturing and any other job potentially affected by going offshore and increased AI/robotic usage. The economy itself will be radically different. Welfare would do best to remove the negative stereotyping and provide a 'basic income' for all individuals. Particularly with an aging population and a shrinking workbase (an argument which we don't even have to take literacy into account).

individual,

>There's no point in debating real problems with people who benefit from the problem.

Do you benefit from the problem? If so, how?
Some of your posts here seem to indicate you may be afflicted by the problem, but I can't see how you'd benefit from it.

Do you think others here benefit from the problem? Again, if so, how?

Either way, your statements wrong because the debates are read by many more people than just the current participants.

Now, why do you surmise that most of the 20% (who, contrary to Jo's assertion, aren't illiterate despite being below the expected standard at that stage) will be on welfare 20 years from now? And why do you expect such a big increase in employment in the public sector and their suppliers?

Mr Century,
I'm looking at the result of education as it has been for three decades on a daily basis. bad spelling, unable to add basic sums or measurments, lack of aptitude in anything trade related, lack of logic in anything practical/useful, lack of consideration, lack of motivation, lack of many social requirements etc. etc.
The only obvious aptitude is on using digital gadgetry.
No amount of here & there percentage, surveys & whathaveyou is doing anything positive towards rectifying this dumbing down in basic education. Most smart cluey kids do go on but what about the insane waste of resources for teachers who're supposedly educating all Kids ?
Many don't morally deserve half of what they're getting & I'm saying this from very close personal observation & interaction with (Qld) teachers.

Individual; a friend asked two radio tech trainees to make three guy
wires for a 20 metre tower, with 10 metres stakes from the base.
He came back to find them drawing on paper a triangle to scale and
measuring the length of the guy wires.
He pointed out that a 1 mm error in measuring on the paper would be
quite large in reality. He told them to calculate it.
They didn't have a clue and both had done the higher school
certificate and passed. He had to explain sq rt of sum of the squares.
I remember doing that in 1st year high school geometry.
Wasn't that Pythagorist's work ?

They probably couldn't spell "Pythagoras" either. :-)