The 2023 edition of the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) provides an overview of the digital skills of pupils in secondary education (students in 8th grade) and highlights performance across countries, gender, and socio-economic background, as well as marginalised groups. In 2024, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sports and Culture, published its own assessment of the report, taking note of key highlights and trends in education across the EU Member States.
About ICILS 2023
The report tracks a number of efforts on the part of EU countries to reach the 2030 targets of the EU Digital Decade, and other targets under the Skills Agenda for Europe. The aim by 2030 is to reduce the share of low-achieving students in computer and information literacy to less than 15%. On average, across the 22 surveyed countries, close to half of students (43%) lack the needed digital skills to succeed in a world transformed by the increased uptake and deployment of digital technologies.
Main findings of the report
The 2024 analysis of the Commission brings forward a range of trends and developments throughout the EU Member States, and highlights some key elements:
- Trends over time: the majority of countries demonstrated either a decline, or a lack of improvement in their scores compared to previous survey cycles – an indication that efforts to increase basic digital literacy still require adjustment.
- Global skills landscape: With 43% of students lacking basic digital skills, the EU is a bit ahead of the United States (51%), but lags behind top performers like South Korea (where this figure stands at just 27%).
- Disparities between (and within) countries persist: the average score in computer and information literacy varies largely from one EU Member State to the next, with some gaps differing up to 46% between top performers like Czechia, and those scoring the lowest.
- Socioeconomic background and gender impact digital skills attainment and improvement. Students from higher socio-economic backgrounds often outperform those, whose families earn less, highlighting the role of parental education and resources in digital literacy.
- Further issues under this layer emerges for students from migrant background, and non-native speakers: those, speaking a different language at home scored lower. There is some silver lining though: in countries like Slovakia, Romania, Malta, Cyprus and Hungary, this is less evident.
- While girls outperformed boys by close to 8% in computer and information literacy, more effort is needed to fill in labour market gaps. Just 20% of ICT experts currently working in Europe are women.
Explore the study
The full report, together with accompanying analysis is available via this link.
Source: European Digital Skills & Jobs Platform
