Palestine literacy rate up to 97.2%, says PCBS

Illiteracy rates among Palestinians aged 15 years and above fell from 13.9 per cent in 1997 to 2.8 per cent in 2018, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said.

In a report issued yesterday to mark International Literacy Day, the PCBS said illiteracy among men fell from 7.8 per cent in 1997 to 1.3 per cent in 2018, while for females it fell from 20.3 per cent to 4.3 per cent.

The rate fell from 14.1 per cent in 1997 to three per cent in 2018 in the occupied West Bank while in the besieged Gaza Strip it dropped from 13.7 per cent in 1997 to 2.4 per cent during the same period.

Illiteracy, according to the UNESCO definition, is when a person does not know to write and read a simple sentence about his or her daily life.

READ: Palestinian refugee students must not be incidental to humanitarian endeavours