While the proportion of adults with a degree or other post-school qualifications has increased, literacy standards have remained largely static.

Literacy standards rose quickly at first but the improvement had stopped.

Over 5m working-age adults now have no qualifications, one in six lack the literacy standards expected of an 11-year-old, and nearly half are functionally innumerate.

Curriculum integration of the environmental literacy standards into the curriculum occur through content integration or as standalone topics of learning.

A number of other countries have developed information literacy standards since then.