Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol.5, No.19, 2014 150 Assessment of Literacy and Numeracy Levels of Junior Secondary School Students in Rivers State of Nigeria D.C Inko-Tariah Ph.D Guidance and Counseling Department, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria Abstract The study assessed both Literacy and Numeracy levels of Secondary School students in Rivers State of Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. One research question and two hypotheses guided the study and a sample of 640 students was selected using stratified random sampling technique. Tests on Literacy and Numeracy were used to collect data. Simple percentage was used to answer the research question, independent t- test used to analyze hypothesis one while one-way ANOVA was used to analyze hypothesis two. Results revealed that students performed better in the Literacy test than the Numeracy test. Female students outperformed the male students in Literacy test while the reverse was the case in the Numeracy test. Both gender and school location made significant differences on students’ levels of Literacy and Numeracy. Keywords: Literacy, Numeracy, Assessment. Introduction World illiteracy level according to Wikipedia (2010) is still very high with about 775 million adults not able to read and write. Three quarters of these are in ten countries in descending order: - India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Brazil, Indonesia and Democratic Republic of Congo. Two thirds of these illiterates are women and very high rates are concentrated in three regions of the world, which are south and west Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Literacy skills as National Literacy Trust (2013) noted are essential to attainment in school and to fulfilling potential opportunities throughout life. Literacy and Numeracy skills are needed in every aspect of life and denying a child the right to these skills is denying him/her a good life, skills to proper adjustment, being a useful member of the society and ability to assess useful information to be able to make the right choices. A person without literacy as Olupotunde (2012) opined lacks real opportunities to effectively engage with democratic institutions to make choices, exercise his/her citizenship rights and act for a perceived common good. Illiteracy dwarfs the mind of an individual due to inability to process information and makes the individual difficult to manage. Nigeria as a Sub-Saharan country and the most populous black country in the world, has her fair share of illiterates. UNESCO (2013) released a National literacy statistics which recorded that Adult literacy rate (15years and above) in Nigeria is 51%, male literacy rate is 61.38% and 41.4% for females. Adult illiterate population is 41,845,172 million with 60.1% of this number as females. Youths (15-24years) literacy rate is 66.4% with 75.6% as males and 58.0% as females. Youth illiterate population is 9,814,568 million with 62.4% of this as females. The United Nations literacy Decade declaration in 2002 to help governments of the world put in strategies to reduce the number of illiterates all over the world has made impact in some countries, but Oluputunde (2012) looking at the Nigerian situation lamented that it is now known that Millennium Development (Goal 2) of eradicating mass illiteracy among adults and children by the year 2015 is not going to be achieved. It is sad that 10 million children of school age are not in school especially in the Northern part of the country, studies are showing that literacy rates in Nigeria vary widely based on geo-political zones and even from state to state. A state like Borno in the northern zone of the country has 72% of primary age children out of school while in the southern zone it can be as low as 3% Okedara in Edem et al (2011) noted another dimension where most primary school leavers constitute a class of illiterates who have attended school but lack the basic literacy and numeracy skills to function properly and effectively. Edem et al (2011) observed that using a foreign language “English” for communication and for learning in schools has peculiar problems and is mostly responsible for low literacy and numeracy levels among primary school leavers. Okon in Edem et al (2011) lamented that a situation where most of the teachers who teach the language are themselves not proficient and lack the basic skills they are supposed to be teaching is very disheartening. In a study of “Primary School Teachers Mastery of Primary School Mathematics Content by Odili and Asuru (2010),” It was found that 78% of primary school teachers have low level of mastery of primary school maths. Okeke-Oti and Adaka in 2012 also revealed evidence of lack of necessary competencies such as pedagogical