10-year plan against functional illiteracy launched in Germany

A decade-long plan to help 7.5 million German people with functional illiteracy improve their reading and writing abilities started Monday in Berlin, local media reported.

Functional illiterates refer to people with limited reading and writing skills, which are not sufficient to manage daily life and working tasks. The plan also aims to promote the group's employment.

"It's harder to cover up the problem of people being not able to read or write correctly in a knowledge society," said German education minister Johanna Wanka. Her ministry will invest 180 million euros (about 190.8 million U.S. dollars) into the plan.

Teaching material should be more relevant to working environment and digital methods should be applied to lower the learning difficulty, according to the plan. Endit