DEVELOPMENT OF READING LITERACY AND DIGITAL COMPETENCES IN SLOVENIA

In PISA 2009 and PISA 2012, Slovenian 15-year- olds were ranked below the member of the states of OECD and EU. At the same time both the percentage of students with low performance, as well as the percentage of students with the highest performance was not satisfactory. Furthermore, we were not satisfied with the achievements of Slovenian students in the area of using ICT and digital competences, published in the international OECD study, Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection (2015). Due to this facts the National Education Institute of Slovenia has launched a 2-year (2011 - 2013) national project Empowering Learners through Improving Reading Literacy and Access to Knowledge (Reading literacy project) and several parallel projects in the area of using information and communication technology (ICT). The main goals of all those projects were to improve reading literacy skills in general, as well as higher-order reading literacy skills and digital competencies. In PISA 2015 Slovenia did a big progress (it reached 505 points) in reading literacy and ranked above the average of the OECD (493 points) and EU countries. In addition, it was also significantly reduced the percentage of underachieved students (below the second level) and increased the percentage of students with the highest achievements. Therefore, the state reached nearly all the goals that were planned in Reading literacy project. How effective have been the recent ICT projects in attaining the meaningful use of ICT and to promoting learning activities that encourage development of higher- order digital competences? In this poster presentation, we are going to present empirical findings that give us an answer on this research question.