On September 8th, 1966, the World Conference of Ministers of Education on the Eradication of Illiteracy began in Tehran, Iran, and a result of this meeting was to proclaim that the opening date of the conference would be forever known as International Literacy Day.

Forty years on, UNESCO are celebrating the 39th (it was inaugurated a year later) official International Literacy Day and it has become a chance to take stock of global literacy standards. We ask how successful the Education for All (EFA) initiative has been in its attempt at increasing literacy rates by 50% by 2015 and how far the UN have progressed with their Literacy Decade that began in 2003.

Perhaps, like me, you don't think about literacy levels around the world every day, which is why these issues are assigned a certain day of the year when we can discuss the issue and think about what we can do to help. Literacy is not only defined by the ability to read and write, but it also incorporates listening and speaking skills, so an individual can function in society.

For many of us it comes as second nature to use these skills, yet an estimated 860 million adults (two thirds of whom are women) do not know how to read or write and more than 100 million children, again the majority female, who lack access to school. According to the United Nations Development Programme Report 2005, the UK and Finland are two of 21 countries with 99.9% literacy levels, yet it shocked me to see five EU members below 97%, while Greece scrapes through with 97.5%.

I did not expect to see the 'cradle of western civilization', the birthplace of western literature and drama to have approximately 281,000 illiterate people within its borders. Whether they are all Greek, I do not know, but Greece does not hold the dubious bottom spot or even second to bottom among current European Union members. Cyprus has illiteracy levels of 96.8% and Serbia 96.4, while Portugal and Malta share bottom spot with 92.5%.

Whether these levels accurately reflect an uneducated native or unskilled refugee does not matter, it is a frightening figure when you consider that two full member countries of the EU have 7.5% illiteracy rates. Naturally attention is focused upon those at the foot of the global table, not those with over 90%, even though they all demand help. When you see that ten nations with the worst literacy levels are all on the west coast of Africa and one of those, Burkina Faso, has over 11.5 million people termed illiterate.

Greece's population is approximately 11.2 million, so it does bring the EU's illiteracy problem sharply into perspective, but it still exists. The UK, my own country, may have 99.9% literacy, but that doesn't equate to complacency when so many children's dyslexia goes un-noticed for years and schools lack the proper funding to offer the support and attention they demand. In addition, Britain's schools are suffering from an ever-increasing class size and a survey of 2,000 adults revealed that a third had not bought a new book in the previous 12 months, while 34% said they did not read books.

International Literacy Day is the time to encourage the third to head to a bookshop and persuade the 34% to read one book. How hard can that be?

To find out more about International Literacy Day, visit UNESCO at www.unesco.org and the International Reading Association at www.reading.org.