In my city of Nottingham last year, nearly one in eight 11-year-olds were unable to read the first lesson at secondary school. That is one of the main causes of educational underachievement, exclusions, low attainment, truancy and poor results, yet that social blindness is a wholly preventable disease. The consequences go far wider than education. It may lead to a lifetime of massively expensive antisocial behaviour, ill health, poor skills and job prospects and drug abuse.

I refer hon. Members to the work of Heckman, the Nobel-prize-winning economist, done for the Scottish Executive on the economic return on investment in education at different ages in a child’s life. He shows very clearly that the earlier we invest, the more we get for our money. I am happy to supply hon. Members with more details of that work if necessary.

One study found that a quarter to a third of 10-year-olds who exhibited antisocial behaviour had a specific reading difficulty. Forty-eight per cent. of the prison population read poorly. Twenty-five per cent. of juveniles in custody have a reading age below that of the average seven-year-old, and so on. We are talking about needlessly broken and wasted lives, but the answers cannot be found through educational remedies alone. Incidentally, I welcome the fact that colleagues from all parties are here today. I intend this to be a wholly non-partisan debate; the subject is too serious for point scoring. I am delighted to see those colleagues and I hope that they will chip in to the debate.

The broader causes of the problem have to be addressed by much more effective long-term social policy, focusing on prevention, pre-emption and early intervention. In fact, that is the motto of my local strategic partnership. All the local experts in Nottingham agree. Professor Colin Harrison, who is professor of literacy studies at Nottingham university, states:

“In my view the greatest single strategy the government could adopt to improve literacy standards nationally would be to support parents and carers in these vital first years, developing the excellent work done by the Sure Start programme, and extending it.”

By the age of four, a professional’s child will have heard 50 million words. A working-class child will have heard 30 million. A child on welfare will have heard less than a quarter of the words heard by a professional’s child; 12 million words will have been addressed to the child on welfare.

Hart and Risley were amazed at how well their measures of accomplishments at age three predicted language skills at the ages of nine to 10. They concluded that school had added little value after the age of three; it was already too late. That is another argument for early intervention.

Dr. Paul Thompson of Nottingham university, once a local head teacher, summed up the situation:

“It is intervention for very young children from poor families that is crucial in raising levels of reading achievement. Children under the age of three need intensive interaction with teachers to make up for what they are not getting at home.”

Nottingham city council’s children’s services director, Edwina Grant, who with her team and with teachers battles these problems every day, says:

“We know that children in Nottingham enter early education with attainment levels well below national expectations, particularly in speaking and literacy.”

That is the raw material that people have to deal with in trying to make progress on educational attainment. When I started, I intended us to have a debate on reading recovery, but I have come rapidly to a different debate about early intervention, for the two are inextricably linked.

Some of the interventions needed are obvious. Locally, poor parenting skills can be addressed by early intervention with mothers of children aged zero to two. An example is the nurse-family partnership, which is being promoted, thankfully, through the Government’s social exclusion policy. Our local education authority and the local strategic partnership, One Nottingham, which I chair, have together put an extra £1 million into the teaching of social behaviour in primary schools, building on social and emotional aspects of learning—the SEAL programme—which is rolling out and will soon go to secondary level, I am glad to say. That will help to equip individuals to choose when they have children and, when they themselves are parents, enable them to raise their nought to five-year-olds to be school-ready, rather than starting 10 paces behind the rest.

There is a distinct lack of joining up, however. I am told that, locally, the number of health visitors has dropped to its lowest since 1998. Starting pay for newly qualified health visitors is now set lower than it was previously, and there will be no incentive for nurses with valuable experience to consider entering that part of the profession and working with young people and their parents. Health visitors, community nurses and midwives are keys to the parenting agenda. They have the skills to make assessments of families and their needs. They introduce the Bookstart scheme to families and encourage parents to spend time with their children introducing them to books. For some families in my constituency, that may not be a priority. Domestic violence and child protection feature highly in Nottingham, North, and much of the health visitors’ time is taken up with addressing those issues. That is all the more reason why they should have some focus and some assistance when it comes to the development of parenting skills

Other bits of joining up are necessary. Adult basic skills must be properly funded by the Learning and Skills Council. In Nottingham, we must resist the short-sighted proposals to close and asset-strip the only further education base in the UK’s most educationally deprived constituency—my own, Nottingham, North. We must link community-based training much more to our local learning centres. Sure Start, which has been an absolute boon for people who live on the outer estates that I represent, must none the less reach out even further to the hardest-to-contact families and the youngest children.

Nationally, the Government have to realise the destructive impact of their target culture. Forcing a chronically educationally underachieving city such as Nottingham to conform to middle England targets and outcomes means that only symptoms, rather than causes, are addressed, so even short-term improvements are not built on firm and sustainable foundations. In those circumstances, the very lowest achieving children do not receive the necessary attention. The focus can be on getting more children who are just a little behind up to the Government level 4 target, leaving the long tail of strugglers to sink. The day job then becomes administering the consequences of underachievement, rather than attacking its origins.

In the era of the local Government White Paper, the Lyons review and, possibly, a change of Prime Minister and new ideas, we need locally to have the ambition and freedom to look those problems in the eye and not be looking over our shoulder for central Government approval. In that context, I have a request for my hon. Friend the Minister. I would appreciate knowing the 2006 results for the UK for 11-year-olds getting below level 3 in English nationally, for all children and for boys and girls separately, and the results by local authority. I do not expect the Minister to carry that information around with him, but if he will ask his officials to write to me, I shall be most grateful. I must put on the record the assistance that I have had from and the interaction that I have had with the excellent officials who have worked in the Department. Like all of us, they are trying to find ways to solve these problems.

The information that I have asked for does not relate to an official target, yet it is vital for the life chances of youngsters in my constituency. It is not a box to tick—I am not looking for that—but it should be a spur to effective local partnership between our local society, parents and children and the voluntary sector. In the short term, however, we need to add reliable, effective, early interventions to tackle children’s reading difficulties. That is why I have sought this debate. For many middle England areas, the work that I am concerned with might be dismissed as schemes or projects, but for a deprived area such as my constituency it is bedrock policy—a prerequisite for achievement and, beyond the education silo, a prerequisite for an effective civil society too.

What can we do? The Government are doing excellent work to reduce the number of children who struggle with reading, by improving general classroom teaching. I always count blessings in this context, including the attention being paid to class sizes, improvements in attainment levels and the extraordinary change in the numbers achieving five A to C grades; they are very welcome and the Government should be praised for what they have done. I make a point of giving that praise, having to date made some criticisms.

The city council in Nottingham is also already doing great work. At the foundation stage great progress is being made with the early reading development pilot, with the result that 56 schools are now involved in the communication, language and literacy development programmes. At key stage 1 Nottingham city is one of the few councils to show progress in reading. At key stage 2 it has made a 4 per cent. gain at level 4. In addition, the intensive support programme and the supporting progress initiative have made substantial gains. The family literacy scheme is doing superb work with parents; literacy volunteers are giving immense support; the Place2B is giving parents an understanding of their children’s reading needs. Other innovations include the “mega read” project, linking primaries, secondaries and library services, and the web-based reading resource that will be sent out to all secondary schools in the next two years. All that tremendous effort from the LEA and teachers will make a serious difference to youngsters in my constituency.

The children whom I am most concerned about, however, are those who on arrival at school are referred to in report after report by Ofsted as being unable to speak in a sentence or recognise a letter or number, who do not understand what “word”, “letter” or “page” mean, and who cannot concentrate in a busy classroom. Those children need full-time, professional reading recovery. It gets 84 per cent. of children back to national average reading levels and sustains that progress. Several parliamentary colleagues present are no doubt from areas where the scheme has been used very successfully. Perhaps I may give an advertisement, since I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) is in her place, for a reception about reading recovery, which is to be held in Parliament next Tuesday; and perhaps if the Minister has not been invited he will still be able to pop in, with other Front Benchers, to add weight to the great work that is being done by the organisation concerned.

“Every child a reader” projects are operating in many parts of the UK and, indeed, throughout the English-speaking world. They involve a short-term intervention for six-year-olds. Children receive daily 30-minute one-to-one lessons for up to 20 weeks, from a specially trained teacher. The children’s parents or carers are also engaged to support their children’s learning. The approach is one of the cheapest innovations that we can provide. It is an inoculation against a lifetime of illiteracy. Cheap? To give an illiterate, alienated, disruptive 16-year-old a place in a secure unit for a year costs £250,000. Giving that same child, earlier on, by reading recovery, the talent to read—to access the whole world through reading—costs £2,500, so 100 youngsters could be given national level reading ability for the price of picking up the pieces for one child who perhaps did not get the intervention that they needed when they needed it.

Reading recovery is not an easy option. It requires initial training for reading recovery teachers, which takes a year. That training continues, so that the teachers can stay at the same high level of skills. I do not disparage at all the fantastic effort of volunteers or teaching assistants in helping youngsters to read. I am concerned with getting the momentum going—with getting the youngsters to a level at which they will benefit even more from those other interventions.

Reading recovery was supported by large-scale Government funding, and was then funded by local authorities and school budgets, and through regeneration programmes, but now it needs clarity and direction from Government. It is, in some senses, at a turning point, and it needs Government—and the Minister—to be clear about how the future for reading recovery is seen.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I should be delighted; I know that the hon. Lady has a long-standing interest in the matter.

I cannot say that I disagree with anything that the hon. Gentleman has said, but would it not be more complete to ask the Minister for a whole strategy, including tackling communication problems pre-school, as well as picking up the pieces when people have fallen through the gap, but keeping the continuity right through education? A short intervention will not work unless it is backed by resources in a long-term strategy.

The hon. Lady has hit on a serious and important point. All too often we are considering remedies—putting things right instead of getting them right in the first place, and instead of setting up a continual strategy to ensure that children achieve. Wherever we look in social policy we can perceive what is happening: for example, in relation to 16 to 18-year-olds in my constituency who are not in employment, education or training one might ask why—where is it going wrong? Then the analysis can be regressed back to secondary school and the skills taught there: one can ask why one in seven boys in my constituency could not read the first lesson at school. Then one can ask about primary level, the giving of support and, as I have mentioned, the teaching of social behaviour at that level; and then one can read the Ofsted reports of every primary school in my constituency—which, I admit, is at one end of the spectrum—highlighting the problem of youngsters not being ready for school. Regressing further, one comes to the point at which a child is born, and the level of parenting skills and interaction.

I have seen an incredibly revealing slide from research work done by Worldwide Alternatives to Violence, which has been used in the social exclusion unit booklet, showing the brain of a three-year-old child who is loved, nurtured and spoken to, and who has all that a young child needs, alongside the brain of a neglected child who has no interaction, is poorly nourished and does not receive the stimulus that one would expect. There is a marked difference in size between the brains of those youngsters, aged three. To see that given physical expression was a shock and a sobering experience, even for someone who, like me, feels that they know a little about the subject. There are youngsters who are physically unable to do what everyone else takes for granted. The intervention by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) is, therefore, absolutely right.

We need to complete a circle back to what we do to improve parenting skills, what we do prenatally and what we do before the people concerned decide—if a choice is indeed made—to have a child. The process should loop round to the parenting skills and the social and family skills that we are now beginning to teach in secondary school, so that people make the right choices and do not experience teenage pregnancy or take up the unhealthy lifestyles that so many youngsters engage in. If we complete that virtuous circle, we can start to tackle some of those problems, rather than spend billions of pounds on the consequences of neglect and the failure to intervene at the right time.

The case is put particularly eloquently by a quote in the Select Committee on Education and Skills 2005 report, “Teaching Children to Read”:

“Too many children fail to reach adequate levels of literacy: Whatever the impact of recent developments in the teaching of literacy, there has been little improvement at the lower end of the achievement spectrum”,

on which I have tried to focus today. It goes on:

“The education system in England is still failing to meet the needs of a significant proportion of children who leave school with inadequate literacy for the demands of the modern world…The implementation of Reading Recovery is under serious threat in England. In the past three years, schools in England have reported increasing difficulty in their ability to fund the programme for their least able children and six longstanding LEAs have ceased their implementation, with three more currently at risk. Lack of funding has been the principal reason given for closures.”

The Select Committee goes on to say:

“If the Government wishes to make a real difference to the literacy rates among primary school children, it must ensure that suitable programmes are available to all those children who require intensive support, and that they are delivered by highly qualified professionals.”

That sums up my argument.

On one level, I would like to see a world in which all parents were helped to be skilled enough to ensure that every child arrived at school school-ready and prepared to take the journey of learning to read. Parents need that help. In my constituency, 58 per cent. of children are born out of wedlock. I make no moral judgment about that, but it is a structural fact that needs to be addressed in a constituency such as mine. Parents absolutely need that early intervention so that they can give their children the future that they want to give them just as much as any parent in the Chamber wants to give their children a good future.

Until children are arriving at school school-ready, I would like reading recovery to be available to all children, not just in my constituency but everywhere in the UK where difficulties with literacy needlessly waste their potential. I make an offer: as chair of the local strategic partnership, One Nottingham, I am prepared to help to fund such an initiative in my city if and when the local education authority and the children and young people’s partnership there feel that that is appropriate and are ready to go ahead with it.

I end with a quote from someone who is learning to read and doing pretty well—my daughter Grace. This morning, while I was preparing for this speech and Grace was sitting reading a book, I said to her, “Grace, I’ve got this speech in the House of Commons; I don’t know really know how to finish it appropriately, because it is pretty serious. What do you think?” She put down the Lemony Snicket book that she was reading and looked at me. I said, “Tell me, Grace, why is reading important?” and she replied, “You don’t get much out of life if you don’t read.” I ask the Minister to give every child that opportunity.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) for raising this important issue. He spoke with a great deal of passion and conviction. I am sure that those of us who regard these matters enthusiastically are not unique; there are many others outside this place who feel that passion. I certainly feel it having spent 13 years in a classroom as a teacher of young children before coming to this place.

The central feature of the case for enhanced reading recovery programmes is not simply about literacy or academic achievement, crucial though they are. As the hon. Gentleman has made clear, the capacity to read is closely linked—I apologise if there is a very child-centred feel to my remarks—to self-esteem, behavioural patterns in school and beyond, and the ability of all children fully to be involved in the school community and to access the entire curriculum. I shall not succumb to the temptation of relating anecdotes of my experiences, but I will say that one could guarantee that at one of the urban schools in which I taught, such behavioural problems and the more deep-seated problems on the estate could be traced back to the problems of underachievement, particularly in literacy. One could pinpoint those cases almost universally. That was the reality of the situation.

I shall not get into the debate about standard assessment tests and particular statistics of achievement, on some of which the hon. Gentleman and I may beg to differ, other than to comment on the target culture that he mentioned. As a teacher—and professional, I hope—I know that we all felt that pressure very strongly. Mercifully, SATs have now gone in Wales. The teaching profession went through the rigours and stipulations of the national curriculum and the emergence of the literacy and numeracy hours. I welcomed the literacy hour because it gave me a focus as a new teacher, but many children simply could not keep up. For them, it was absolutely meaningless to look in detail at text for an hour every day and analyse word patterns. Those were children in years 5 and 6, not the youngest children about whom the hon. Gentleman is particularly concerned, as we all are.

There is no doubt that a huge number of children are missing out. At the core of this debate are issues of inclusiveness and entitlement. I have seen figures that suggest that 440,000 adults in Wales—25 per cent. of the population—have serious literacy difficulties. We are told that young offenders in pupil referral units are missing out on basic educational programmes, but as the hon. Gentleman has said, the failing is much earlier on. We know that early intervention works, and that with approaches of the types suggested, two thirds of the children involved will go on to achieve expected levels at the end of key stage 1. Given that early impetus, and without extra help, half of those children will achieve expected levels four years on at the end of key stage 2. That is why it is vital to build a culture of reading and appreciating books. That is not just a middle-class phenomenon.

I remember parent interviews and that all too often if I dared to suggest that there was work to be done at home, the response was that these matters are the responsibility of schools. Parents think, “My children come here at 9 am and they leave at 3.30 pm. It is your responsibility.” That is a real and broad phenomenon. I would send home reading books every day, but with the full expectation that they would be brought back unsigned the next day, week or, indeed, month.

I understand why some of the pilot schemes have been focused on urban areas, because there is, of course, a huge need there, but there is also a need in rural areas such as those represented by me and other hon. Members. In a small village school with one underperforming child who has behavioural problems, the problem is magnified in the whole school community in the same way as with larger numbers of children in urban areas.

The “every child a reader” pilot is admirable—5,000 five and six-year-olds are being helped—but it is inevitably limited in its scope, and it will end in 2008. When I spoke to its director yesterday, she told me that she hopes that the experience of the pilot will win the hearts and minds of decision makers. I hope that the Minister will give us assurances about its future, its expansion and the promotion of such schemes after 2008. Will he also say something about rural areas?

In what environment, therefore, can reading be effectively taught to children who are perhaps two, three or more years behind their chronological reading age? Having taught classes ranging in size from 14 to 36 pupils, I know that the intensive catch-up programmes that are required cannot take place in a conventional class environment. Gone are the days when a teacher would dutifully hear children read every day, let alone teach those with particular difficulties. Early intervention is therefore the key. Normal teaching does not enable slow readers to catch up.

Although we are right to praise the work done by the increased numbers of classroom assistants and teachers, this debate is not about class sizes. Of course, reducing class sizes will help, and my party has a lot of good things to say about the issue, but what we need is more focused intervention.

Nor can measures to promote reading be latched on to special educational needs policy in schools. SEN budgets are tight, SEN timetables are often full on the action and action plus levels, and there is the issue of statementing. Yesterday, I spoke to a special needs teacher who said that

“50 per cent. of the children”—

not only in year 1, but in years 5 and 6—

“need extra teaching of reading.”

However, that teacher must rely on some of her children being away ill to fulfil the requirements of those who remain and give them the time that they need, even in her special needs classes. She strongly feels that she cannot deliver what is required without extra focused resources, and although I used to manage a small school improvement budget, it was never enough to supply anything other than the occasional focused support.

All that points to the need for bold, imaginative and direct intervention focused on books. There are instances of children who do not know how to open a book, let alone read one; they do not understand the mechanism of turning pages or what the little numbers in the corners are. We need to build in an approach that deals with such issues, because if we target them early on, we shall be making a long-term investment in the future. That will help children who simply do not read at home, who do not have books at home and who would not dream of going to a library. It will help boys who are uninterested in reading or who are fully aware that they are slipping behind the girls—there is a strong gender issue here, too.

A huge amount of pioneering work has been done in individual schools—it has been largely inspired by what has happened in New Zealand—and we have heard of the good work that is being done in Nottingham. However, I was struck by the thoughts of the educationist Barbara MacGilchrist, who wrote:

“Short-term uncoordinated initiatives to raise standards do not work...To combat underachievement in reading, a long-term, system-led strategy, nationally co-ordinated and locally managed is required.”

We need a joined-up approach at different levels of government in Scotland, Wales or England—I say that as someone who represents a Welsh constituency—to put the issue on the agenda. That approach was clearly articulated by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North.

However, this is not just about schools or the six hours for which I had children in my care—it is about the other 18 hours, too. A key component of any reading policy must be reading in the home. The overwhelming research evidence shows that a huge difference can be made when parents, neighbours, family members and carers get involved. I commend the work of the Family Reading Campaign and the BBC, which has been promoting reading and writing in a way that actively involves parents and particularly fathers—again, there is a gender issue here, because reading is left to the wife. I am quite proud of the fact that I was sitting reading the last chapter of “The Magic Faraway Tree” with my daughter on Sunday night. I do not know whether Enid Blyton is in vogue, but my daughter got a lot out of it. She was certainly stimulated by the experience, and both my three-year-old and my six-year-old are stimulated by the English and Welsh language books that come home from school. The aim must be to build parents’ confidence in their own literacy skills, although that is a huge job, and we have heard of the shortfall in the past.

Although there are issues about how Sure Start will be evaluated and about the way forward, it has made a big difference, particularly in the most deprived areas. In particular, I pay tribute to Book Start, which has been significant and has given many young children their first experience of books. It is managed by Booktrust, funded by Sure Start and delivered by libraries and local health services. My wife and I had twins just before Christmas, and I look forward to them having their bag of books from the local health service when they are a little older. Such measures have made a big difference for many families.

I commend the report produced by Jim Rose, which was commissioned by the DFES. In it, he states that

“developing children’s positive attitude to literacy, in the broadest sense, from the earliest stage is very important…For the youngest children, well before the age of five, sharing and enjoying favourite books with trusted adults…is at the heart of this activity. Parents and carers should be strongly encouraged in these pursuits and reassured that, in so doing, they are contributing massively to children’s literacy and to their education in general.”

That really is an endless task, and it needs clearer, focused direction at all levels of government.

Finally, let me say something about the key issues of teacher training and the training of experts in reading recovery. There are many failings in teacher training, and I endured a one-year postgraduate certificate of education course in which the education that I received in special needs was minimal. None the less, although the £20,000 salaries that we are talking about for intensive provision to promote reading will cost a lot, most of us here will agree that that cost is ultimately worth paying.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr. O’Hara. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing this debate on a subject that is crucial not only to my constituency, but nationally. Initially, I want to say a little about where I come from on the issue and about the issues in my constituency.

I have been interested in the issue of reading and children since I became a secondary school governor in the early 1990s. I went into a special educational needs class and saw 11-year-olds struggling to read books that normal five and six-year-olds would have no struggle reading. At that point, I thought that I really needed to see what was going on in our primary schools, so I became a primary school governor and served as one for nine years. Since then, as a mother and an MP, I have seen how Sure Start, quality under-fives provision, literacy hour and reading recovery have made a difference.

Before he became Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend said that his priorities were “education, education, education”, and that script could have been written for Hackney. The challenges in Hackney schools and among Hackney’s children were, and still are, many. Population turnover is high and ranges from 25 to 30 per cent. of the total. That does not affect all schools, but it does affect a number. Only last summer, I visited a school with my noble Friend Lord Adonis, who is Minister with responsibility for London schools. Fewer than 20 per cent. of the year 6 pupils at that school had been there since reception. The school was in the middle of some dense council estates, and people were trying to find a way to move and leave the school. That created huge challenges not only for that school, but for many others.

Hackney also has higher than average numbers of children with English as a second language and on free school meals. In addition, there has been a lack of investment in school buildings over the years. It is worth paying tribute to the work done in my area by the London borough of Hackney, which has had its problems in the past. However, under the leadership of Hackney’s current mayor and the Learning Trust—the agency that now runs Hackney schools—some real hard work has been done. There has been a political focus on providing a framework and support in respect of buildings and resources so that teachers and our excellent head teachers can do their jobs properly. The approach in Hackney has been, “Let’s take what the Government have to offer and make it work for Hackney.” I therefore commend the Hackney experience to the Minister. If we can fix things in Hackney, that can be a real model for what can be done elsewhere.

Hackney schools really are schools plus. They work with children from some of the most challenging backgrounds, where alcohol and substance abuse are common. A lot of those children need child protection, but they intermingle with children who are perhaps from more stable backgrounds. However, our schools provide stability, and it is often the only stability that some of those children have in their chaotic lives.

Hackney schools have embraced extended schools fully. I visited a number of schools in my constituency during September, all of which offer breakfast clubs and after-school activities, and several of the secondary schools provide weekend and evening activities too. Indeed, the head teacher of the Hackney Free and Parochial Church of England secondary school said that she wants a cleaning contract in the school to run from 10 pm to 6 am, because that is the only time of the day, week, or year that the school is not being used, save for a week or two’s closure in the summer. I commend that model to other areas.

There is also a great deal of adult learning in English, information and communications technology and general literacy in our schools. They are opened up for the parents, who hit the system at the point where their child gets to primary or secondary school, and they are welcomed into Hackney schools. Family learning is a particularly important area for Hackney schools, and I want to give a couple of examples in that regard.

Burbage primary school’s head teacher, Karen Glenister, who is a visionary woman, has been working with parents to encourage them to learn about how to be better parents. She talks about one experience involving a parent who was called in a number of times because his son was being a little difficult. Originally he would say, “How dare you call me in? My son is an angel who never misbehaves, and you are picking on him.” Gradually, she won him round and got him to acknowledge that there were some difficulties, although not insoluble ones, with his son’s behaviour. She hooked him in to a parent support scheme, and at the end of the year, he turned up to the school smartly dressed in a suit and with a speech prepared. He asked whether he could make it as he was awarded his certificate for his adult learning experience. He spoke with great emotion about how his family life and his life as a father was so much better because of the support he had received through the primary school.

That picks up on points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North and the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) that reading recovery, although important, needs to be part of a wider whole and that parental support is also crucial.

Daubeney primary school in Homerton has just received a large sum of money over three years to ensure that it can provide family learning support of a similar nature. Those are just two examples, but all schools in Hackney are doing something. If the Minister would like to know more about this, I commend that he visit Hackney to see things for himself.

Thanks to Government investment, new buildings and new schools are being built in Hackney. Three new city academies have either been built or are on the way. Mossbourne community academy, our first one, received an outstanding Ofsted report just a couple of weeks ago. Great progress has been made, which has translated into results. This year, for the first time in many years, more than 50 per cent. of pupils in Hackney schools gained five or more A* to C-grade GCSEs—the actual figure was 51 per cent, which represents an increase of 4 per cent. from last year. Results in Hackney are improving three times faster than those in the rest of England.

Unfortunately, a Channel 4 programme recently decided to name Hackney as the worst place in Britain to live, but these results show that such programmes are living in the past. Perhaps people should visit Hackney and its schools to see how Hackney is definitely not the worst; I think it is one of the best places in Britain.

We have also benefited from other national schemes such as Book Start, which runs from birth, Sure Start for all under-fives and the effect of Sure Start on four and five-year-olds in respect of support when they reach primary school. That is why reading recovery is important.

Hackney reading recovery schemes are funded in a variety of ways in the borough: the neighbourhood renewal fund gives money to schemes in 10 schools; the Shoreditch trust is a new deal for communities partnership that funds six schools in the Shoreditch area; and “Every child a reader”, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North, referred is a partnership between the Department for Education and Skills, charitable trusts and the business sector, including, in particular, the KPMG Foundation, that funds five schools. That scheme is hosting an event in Parliament next week, and I hope that the Minister will be able to go along to hear more about this. Four schools are self-funding; the value of reading recovery is such that they found the resources to provide this invaluable service.

My hon. Friend went into great detail about the research in this area, so I shall not repeat all that. The cost of reading recovery is about £2,500 a child. That provides the one-to-one tuition that is needed for half an hour a day over three to four months. As he said, it is peanuts when we consider the consequences of not tackling the issue and the impact on society of children who leave school with lower than average levels of literacy.

The reading recovery programme is well established and is working well in Hackney, which was one of the first 11 areas in the country to use it. Currently, there are 43 trained reading recovery teachers, who work in 25 schools. Some 20 of those schools have one full-time reading recovery teacher per form entry.

In Hackney, reading recovery is an important part of the work to tackle poverty and improve the life chances of children. The children in that scheme are some of the most in need. Two out of three children on the programme in Hackney are entitled to free school meals, and 13 per cent. are either looked-after children or are from asylum-seeking and refugee families. As we know from other research, children from families where the main impediment to learning relates to English language quickly catch up and go on to contribute a great deal if they receive the right support at an early stage.

Many children in Hackney schools are learning English as a second language, and reading recovery has an important role in improving attainment; some65 per cent.—well over half—have English as an additional language, and 25 per cent are Turkish or Kurdish speaking. I have discussed some of the issues for Turkish and Kurdish speakers in my constituency with the DFES. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to parents at Alevi, which is a large Turkish and Kurdish organisation, about the challenges that face their children. They are concerned that their children are slipping behind in schools. It is a question not of their intelligence but of the barriers that are created, partly through language. I also gave those parents a challenge. I said that their children will not do so well unless they speak English, or even Turkish, at home. Many Hackney schools provide Turkish literacy lessons for parents, so that they learn to improve their speaking with their children in their mother tongue. That provides an enormous benefit.

Recently, I spoke to another hon. Member who represents a London constituency, who told me that some early research is being done—so I shall not name the constituency at this point—that seems to indicate that children who attend additional Saturday school English and Turkish classes then do better at GCSE level. We are collating that research, and I flag this up to the Minister because there is a London-wide issue about how our Turkish and Kurdish children are achieving. I want the slower rate of progress to change so that their achievement is on a par with that of other ethnic groups that have English as a second language.

There have been major successes in the achievement of black boys. I give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who represents my neighbouring constituency and who pioneered the issue before it was flavour of the month. She put it on the educational map. We need to do similar things with the education of Turkish and Kurdish pupils, and she, and others in Hackney and across London, are trying to do that. I want to flag that up to the Minister because he will be hearing more about it from a number of us over the coming months.

I return to the issue of reading recovery. Reading recovery teachers train and support teaching assistants in the talking partners programme, which focuses on important oral language skills for children: developing the speaking and listening skills that underpin literacy. As other hon. Members have said, many children do not get that development at home.

It is important to ensure that investment is made in language development in schools. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North referred to the perfect world that we may one day been in, where parents have all the parental support that some get through Hackney schools and hopefully others get through schools in his constituency. Parents do not all get that now, so we must ensure that we provide it in schools alongside the important parental learning.

It is important that the programme is not just one in Hackney or Nottingham: it must be nationwide. In Hackney and in London generally, there is a high turnover in population. Children often do not stay in the same school. It is important that such children do not lose out just because they have changed school, particularly where their parents do not understand or value what the reading recovery programme gives them. It is unjust that a child on such a scheme can lose the support overnight by moving school; it does not travel with them and it is not universal. Some 6 to 7 per cent. of children, rising to 10 per cent. among boys, leave primary schools without the most basic reading and writing skills. That represents about 40,000 children a year in England. I am sure that the Minister takes this seriously.

The reading recovery scheme is one of the programmes that provides excellent results. Some83 per cent. of children in Hackney who take part in it catch up completely with their classmates, and often overtake them, after only 12 to 20 weeks of daily teaching. The £2,500 is a small price to pay for that rapid, tangible progress. I know that the Government like to see tangible progress and like to point out how their investment is getting results. On that basis, I hope that the Minister was listening closely to those figures. Throughout the country and in Hackney, it is helping to give the best chance to the children who mostneed it.

Numeracy recovery is also starting in some schools in Hackney and I shall be interested to see how that programme develops for slow learners in maths. Other issues are involved in how that is programmed in and it is not just a one-off hit, so a different approach may be needed, but it is an exciting project.

We do not want children to fall behind at that crucial early stage in their lives and to be labelled a substandard reader, because that will impact on them for the rest of their lives. My hon. Friend referred to some of the figures on people in prison and youth custody who cannot read well. Of those in youth custody, 25 per cent. had a reading age of below seven. That is disgusting in our modern world and we must tackle the problem. It will take years to get the solution through the system, but if we deal with reading recovery now we will get there.

My direct plea to the Minister is that we need continuity of funding, not one-off schemes. We need a national programme and to follow Hackney’s example of the excellent parent and learning family support that is provided through our schools. In short, we need Sure Start not just for under-fives, but at five and for parents who did not have that start in life.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing this debate and the ecumenical way in which he spoke—the seating arrangements this morning are also ecumenical. He mentioned deprivation and the effect that low literacy and numeracy standards can have on trapping people in the deprived circumstances they may have had since birth. He also mentioned the low literacy and numeracy standards of people in prison, as did the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) when she spoke about young offenders. There is a large prison in my constituency and we know about the measurable levels of literacy and numeracy, but when one talks to prisoners their low articulation skills are striking and follow from low education skills. That partly explains why they find themselves in those dreadful circumstances.

We know from the Government’s research and the Department’s report in 2005 that the gap in educational attainment between key stage 2 for children aged 11 who have free school meals and those in families that are not eligible for that support can be up to 2.9 terms—in anyone else’s language that means a year’s loss of teaching support. That feeds through into a wider gap at GCSE level. In higher education—I usually speak on that for my party—the participation rate for those from working class families is around15 per cent., whereas for those from professional families and whose parents have been to university it is 80 per cent. There is a yawning gap in participation rates in higher education. That gap grows wider from the age of seven and that is probably the age at which the gap at 18 is determined.

The hon. Member for Nottingham, North mentioned the number of words that children from different families might hear at a young age. I think he said—he will correct me if I am wrong—that children from a professional family background might hear 50 million words, but those from a working class background might hear 12 million. Early intervention will pay a great dividend.

I said that children in a family on benefits might hear 12 million words. The middle range for children in working class families is 30 million. Interaction and articulation in families on benefits is far less.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. We both illustrated that there is a big gap in articulation levels and that is probably set very early by what children hear from their parents.

I am reminded of my A-level history lessons on the counter-reformation and Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, who said, “If you give me a child until the age of seven he will have my standards for life thereafter.” That applies in so many ways.

We are debating the reading recovery programme—in some parts of the country it is called “Every child a reader”. We know from the figures quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) that the levels of support that the programme can achieve are impressive. At key stage 1, two thirds of children who took part in the programme achieved the expected level and, even without further support, half achieved the expected level by the time they got to key stage 2. Going back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke)—she has now left the Chamber—said during an intervention, if that support were maintained throughout education, those percentages and fractions would, I am sure, be much higher.

Literacy is about not only reading skills, but language and communication. In a modern economy we need to turn out people who can go into the workplace at 16 or 18 to sell, to persuade, to negotiate and to achieve what is best for them and their employers. Alarming trends are set early in life for whether they are likely to leave school with those educational skills.

The 2004-05 annual report of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority on English says that

“at key stages 1-3 there is still little evidence that speaking and listening is being taught explicitly or securely assessed”.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Education and Skills and the hon. Member for Nottingham, North quoted from its report during the previous Parliament: “Teaching Children to Read”. Another extract says that

“children need to talk and to experience a rich diet of spoken language, in order to think and learn. Reading, writing and number may be the acknowledged curriculum ‘basics’, but talk is ‘arguably the true foundation of learning’”.

Partly for those reasons and partly because of evidence that we picked up elsewhere—this is the one party point I shall make—the Liberal Democrats have set up the 4Rs commission to examine not only reading, writing and arithmetic, but the skill of articulation. We have tried to take politics out of that commission by ensuring that it is headed by a respected educationist, Bethan Marshall, and consists of primary school teachers and people who work with children in other fields, including children’s entertainment and TV.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion mentioned the role of other parts of government, such as local government and libraries. As a child, I discovered the joy of reading partly from going to my local library back in south Wales. I was lucky to have home support. I read Enid Blyton books and remember “The Magic Faraway Tree” and the “The Enchanted Wood”, as, I am sure, do many of us.

One sector that has not been spoken about is the voluntary sector and its role. In my constituency recently, I met a group called Volunteer Reading Help, a charity that has existed in Bristol since the 1970s. It now provides support in more than 1,000 schools throughout the country. It goes into schools and works, typically, with groups of four children twice a week for 30 minutes to give them the reading support that they need. The emphasis in that support is not on achieving any key stage or curriculum requirements; it is all about the fun of reading. It teaches reading by encouraging children to read books that they enjoy and to take part in games. Its results have been impressive.

There is also a role for possessions. I am not a father, but I am a godfather and I know that my godchildren love being given books. The bag of books that my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion mentioned is obviously playing a role, but there are many other ways open to the Government and voluntary sector. I was given an annual book at Sunday school and I still have them all at home. Just giving a child a book that belongs to them and they can hold on to will encourage them to take up the joy of reading. There is a role for the Government, a role for the profession, a role for parents and a role for volunteers to start children on the voyage of discovery that the joy of reading can lead them to.

I am pleased to speak under your chairmanship, Mr. Bayley, during the closing part of this discussion. I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing this debate. We have heard in some powerful contributions, showing that we feel strongly about this issue on both sides of the House, and I applaud his consensual approach to the debate, which is important, because as the hon. Gentleman said, the point at which we learn to read can determine so much of the rest of our lives. A child’s vocabulary at five years old, and reading age at 10 years old, are pivotal. They are even more important than parental contribution, although the two go hand in hand. That is unsurprising, because if reading is not sound, accessing the remainder of the curriculum is a fundamental problem, and no one wants to see a waste of potential. That is why we are rightly concerned about literacy problems, and why I am concerned that one in five 11-year-olds does not achieve his or her expected reading age.

The hon. Gentleman said that difficulty with reading varies. However, we should be concerned about all underachievement, because being unable to read properly early in life severely undermines our children’s chances of a secure future. That is important, given the correlation between low literacy and children living in poverty.

The concept of reading recovery was introduced to the UK in 1992 under a previous Government, but it enjoyed cross-party support. Many other schemes have drawn on the expertise of the reading recovery approach, but the original approach is intensive. There are daily half-hour sessions in which highly trained teachers support six-year-olds who are usually in the bottom 20 per cent. of their class for reading.

As with any reading scheme, reading recovery has its critics. Some question the cost, but research indicates that the scheme has a positive impact when used effectively in schools. The Institute of Education and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority have assessed its impact and they feel that it helps the weakest readers—those to whom the hon. Gentleman referred. The published results are compelling. Seventy per cent. of those who were in the bottom20 per cent. of their class at six years old and received reading recovery support had moved up to the average band four years later. That is testament to the scheme’s success.

Few people doubt that reading recovery can help in the most difficult cases, but reading recovery is aimed at just that—recovering pupils who start to fail in the education system. The QCA believes that the main focus should be on catching children before they fail. I am interested in that view, because it has great merit.

The hon. Gentleman discussed the city of Nottingham, where I attended school for a brief period and which I know quite well. All hon. Members owe it to the children in their constituencies to get right first time the teaching of reading. We must root out the underlying problems that create the need for reading recovery. The hon. Gentleman rightly said that the earlier we invest, the more we get it right. We should aim for prevention.

That is why I shall concentrate on three areas on which I should welcome the Minister’s response. They are Sure Start, nurseries and synthetic phonics. An important element of the original Sure Start idea was to work with the most disadvantaged families to break the cycle of poverty that exists in all constituencies. In my constituency, there are two small areas of extreme deprivation. Unfortunately, because of their geography, they do not receive the support of a Sure Start programme; however, they receive lots of support from other organisations.

We must consider how we can break the cycle of poverty in which people are trapped. Education is an important element, and staff at the successful Sure Start programmes that I have visited in different parts of the country think that literacy is pivotal. The Sure Start programme in Reading, which I visited recently, has developed a home reading support scheme for the youngest children. It includes rhyming tapes to help mothers who may not know the nursery rhymes that we knew as children. Rhymes can be an important first step in gaining the communication skills that lead to reading skills. The Reading programme has also developed a book library, so that children who may not have access to books in their home have the opportunity from the very earliest years to see how books can add to their lives. [Interruption.]

Mr. Bayley, I am only three yards away from the hon. Lady, who is making a compelling case. However, I am finding it difficult to concentrate because of the hammering and burrowing on the outer wall. Might something be done about it, at least for future debates? I should like to hear her argument.

I have just discussed the matter with the Clerk, and I understand that the attendant has gone to see whether the noise can be reduced. The problem is that the work must be completed by the state opening of Parliament. I hope that the attendant is able to help us.

Thank you, Mr. Bayley. I just thought that even more people were trying to get in to listen to our debate.

You were doing extremely well.

Thank you, Mr. Bayley.

Sure Start can make a valuable contribution to the improvement of literacy skills. There is a local example in Westminster. The Westminster Children’s Society Sure Start programme involves the local library in its work to improve literacy skills from a very early age. The society runs story times at the library with the aim of introducing books to the very young—the pre-pre-school children. Importantly, it tries to identify where help is needed with parental literacy. I was most impressed with the range of books in the library that I visited in Westminster, which included works in more than 20 different languages. It showed how much work has been done to support the diverse community only a stone’s throw from our place of work.

As the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) said, Sure Start tries to develop a culture of learning very early on, and as other Members have said, it should reach out to an even broader community. After only a few short years, however, the fundamental changes to Sure Start funding and to the introduction of children’s centres has called into question the future of such projects. Owing to the nature of children’s centres, future funding per child will be cut from £1,300 to £250. How realistic is it to think that that important work will continue? I should welcome the Minister’s thoughts, because established and highly motivated professionals who work in those organisations are worried by the changes.

Hon. Members have this morning highlighted the important way in which nurseries and pre-school groups ensure readiness for school. The UK Effective Provision of Pre-school Education project, EPPE, found compelling evidence that those who attended nursery had significantly improved cognitive and social development skills, making them much better placed to start learning to read when they went to full-time school. Again, however, there is concern about the future funding of nurseries and, in particular, the funding of nursery places for three and four-year-olds. The change in funding will mean a bleak future for many nurseries throughout the country.

The voluntary sector runs many of those organisations. Given their importance in providing a bedrock for reading tuition, will the Minister confirm his commitment to ensure that the funding exists to deliver the Government’s promise of free nursery places? Many nurseries find it hard to fulfil that concept, given the money that they receive from the Government.

Too many of our children still fail to grasp reading the first time round. The evidence has been clear for some time that the best way to teach a child to read is by synthetic phonics. The Government’s own Rose review reinforced the conclusions of a great deal of work that has been done here in the UK and elsewhere by stating that high-quality synthetic phonics should be used as a teaching tool by the age of five. I was glad to hear earlier this year that the Government now fully endorse that view. I will be interested to hear from the Minister what they are doing to embed the approach both in our schools and in the training of teachers. That is vital if this important method is to be used effectively.

All the factors that I have mentioned affect our children’s ability to read. As the hon. Member for Nottingham, North said, reading recovery is an important tool. I was interested to hear the contribution made by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who made a compelling argument for the use of reading recovery, particularly among children who have English as a second language and those who move schools more regularly than the average. The system clearly has an important role in those cases. However, that is one element of a much broader mix. Early years support, nursery schools and synthetic phonics are also vital ingredients. What are the Government doing to remove the question mark over some of the activities that are so successfully being undertaken in Sure Start, and what is the Minister doing to remove the sword of Damocles that is hanging over the heads of so many nurseries?

Some £500 million is used to fund literacy in England, but is it being used in the most effective way possible? The hon. Member for Nottingham, North clearly feels that it is not, and he has taken the opportunity afforded by this debate to articulate his views. The matters that I have raised on Sure Start and the future of our nurseries show that the Government have no room for complacency. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Reading recovery can help some of the children whom the system has failed, but it is most important that every child has the right to learn to read and get the right start to their school life.

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Bayley. You managed to sneak in some way through the debate, and you are very welcome. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing this debate. It is clear from his speech that he cares deeply about the matter, and I know that he has secured Adjournment debates in the past on getting children school-ready by the age of five. I believe that he asked me a question about it just a couple of weeks ago. He made some startling points today, particularly the one also made by the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams) that children from working-class families on benefits have a quarter of the vocabulary of those from a middle-class background. He asked about 11-year-olds, and I undertake to write to him on that with a detailed answer.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) mentioned special educational needs. He is a member of the Select Committee on Education and Skills, and we missed him on Thursday.

That is my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams).

I am sorry, I am getting the wrong Member. We had a three-hour debate in Westminster Hall on Thursday to discuss the SEN report. We have invested in SEN to the tune of a 43 per cent. increase in the past three years and I assure the hon. Gentleman that we have an ongoing commitment. He made interesting points on reading and the involvement of parents. Reading should not be seen as something for girls or the middle class, or as a white thing. Part of my excuse for not being the best read Member of the House, to say the least, is that when I was a child neither of my parents could read particularly well in English.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) mentioned the value of family learning, which is happening in her borough. I recently visited a school in Camden that does a great deal of work on family learning, and it is a valued scheme that helps both children and parents. She also said that there are now three city academies in her borough, so Hackney, South and Shoreditch is setting the pace. I agree that it is far from the worst place in the country to live in—perhaps second best to Gloucester. She said that there has been an 83 per cent. improvement in the catching up of people who have benefited from reading recovery in her area.

The hon. Member for Bristol, West made some interesting points, not least those on the economic enhancement of being able to read from an early age and the knock-on effect for the wider economy. I welcome this opportunity to discuss the literacy levels of children, particularly those from poorer backgrounds. The discussion ties into the debate on how to get the right support for children at the right time. I wish to set it in the context of our wider early years primary work on reading before turning to the distinct contribution of intervention programmes such as reading recovery. I shall also touch upon issues raised by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) on phonics.

The ability to read underpins all educational achievement. It enables children to grow up equipped to take part in society, to have high expectations and to make the most of their learning. Being able to read is essential not merely because it is the foundation of all other learning but because of the joy that it brings to children and adults throughout their lives, not least in the case of Grace Allen, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North mentioned. It is also true of Zac Dhanda, although for someone aged 10 months it is a matter of chewing the pages of a book rather than reading them.

My hon. Friend is concerned about the high number of children who leave primary school with reading difficulties that cause them real frustration and isolation. Ensuring that children are fluent, enthusiastic readers is a vital part of our goal to give every child the chance to fulfil their potential. We cannot afford to overlook pupils or leave anyone behind. We all stand to share the benefits of an economy and society with less education failure, higher skills, reduced crime and better health. My hon. Friend mentioned the stark statistic of the costs involved when young people end up within the criminal justice system. I believe that the figure that he mentioned was about a quarter of a million pounds a year.

The Government have overseen significant improvement in educational achievement, particularly in primary schools. In 1997 one third of children left primary school without having mastered the basics of English and maths; now, three quarters achieve that in maths and about four fifths in English. As the hon. Member for Basingstoke said, this is certainly not a time for complacency. The literacy and numeracy strategies, and now the primary national strategy, have proved successful. The 2006 key stage 2 results are the best primary results that we have ever had. More pupils from all socio-economic groups are getting better results, but the performance gap between those from more and less deprived areas is still big, although it has narrowed. A significant minority experience problems that could lead to poor outcomes in later life. That point has been made by several hon. Members in all parts of the Chamber. We need to identify those children early on and work to ensure that their needs are met with a variety of different strategies. Reading recovery is important, but there is a range of things that we can and should do.

The reforms that are outlined in the schools White Paper set out our aim to provide an education that is tailored to meet each child’s learning needs and abilities, and to narrow the achievement gaps. We shall support schools by providing resources and training to deliver personalised learning, with more catch-up lessons for children falling behind and more opportunities for schools to provide small group and one-to-one tuition for those children who need such extra help. We have made £990 million available to fund personalised learning between 2005-06 and 2007-08. That money is particularly targeted at schools that face the greatest challenges, including those with pupils from deprived backgrounds or with low prior attainment. It will be for schools themselves to decide how to use the resources available to them to meet the individual needs of their pupils.

The Gilbert review, led by Christine Gilbert, is looking at ways to ensure that personalised learning is a reality in every classroom. It will set out a vision for how teaching and learning should develop between now and 2020. The review will report back to us by the end of the year and I look forward to hearing its recommendations.

The renewed primary framework for literacy and mathematics was made available to schools at the beginning of this month and will help to raise attainment levels among all pupils. Through the framework, we have enhanced support to schools and early years settings, and drawn on latest classroom good practice and research. The literacy element of the framework draws on the findings of Jim Rose’s independent review of the teaching of early reading, which has been well trailed in this debate. Rose advocates quality first teaching, which comprises a blend of well-judged whole-class, group and individual work, as the most effective way to raise standards. He confirms that high-quality phonic work should be an inherent part of quality first teaching. The framework underpins Jim Rose’s recommendation that systematic phonic work set within a rich language curriculum is the best route for children in becoming skilled readers.

I support the assertion that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North made that prevention is better than cure. To that end we are developing the early years foundation stage, which is also informed by Jim Rose’s findings. The early years foundation stage is about improving opportunities for all children from birth to the age of five, by giving them the best possible start in life and erasing the artificial divide between care and learning. Evidence shows that an integrated learning and care experience enables children to achieve the best possible outcomes. The early years foundation stage will provide children with the experiences and activities that they need to grow, learn and develop.

It is quite a coincidence that earlier today I attended a conference that four children had arranged on the subject of extended schools. Extended schools, children’s centres and Sure Start are the best possible demonstration of our long-term commitment to early years. Hon. Members will be aware that we have surpassed our target for extended schools, with more than 3,000 having been created, along with more than 1,000 children’s centres, with a view to ensuring that every school is an extended school by the turn of the decade.

With the change from Sure Start to children’s centres and the consequent reduction per head in the amount of funding that will be available to them, how does the Minister feel the literacy programmes that Sure Start has successfully run to date will be affected?

I shall come on to that, although I have seen a range of projects in children’s centres, and it seems that more and more are being developed, so I do not agree entirely with the hon. Lady that we shall see a reduction. Rather, there will be a greater level of support through children’s centres, but I shall come to that in a few moments.

We know that early access to high-quality care and education has a positive effect on educational achievement. We shall focus on closing the achievement gap between those children and others. Repeated studies show that bright children from poorer households begin to fall behind less able children from more affluent backgrounds from as early an age as just 22 months. At that young age, such children have already become less likely to succeed at school and more likely to become unemployed, and therefore in wider need of support from society but, paradoxically, less able to access it.

We have invested £20 billion in early years and child care, so that there are now more than 1.25 million child care places. We have met our target early to open 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres, providing vital support to the parents of 800,000 children throughout the country. There are now 3,000 extended schools, offering wrap-around child care from eight in the morning until six in the evening, and in some cases for longer periods. That is a pretty good demonstration of our commitment. That investment is being rolled out to an extent never seen before in this country, to every community. Every hon. Member here will have noted new children’s centres opening in their constituencies, at an average rage of around six for every constituency by the end of the decade. We shall expand that to half of all primary schools by 2008, with the extended schools, and to all schools by 2010. That is quite a multi-billion pound commitment.

The literacy and numeracy strategies, the primary framework and the early years foundation stage are all about getting it right first time, from the earliest age. For some children, intervention will always be necessary. We recognise that we need systems in place that offer second and third chances, by identifying when a child is falling behind and stepping in with extra help to put them back on track for success. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North outlined, reading recovery is an early literacy intervention that offers another chance to those hardest-to-reach children. The programme is directed at those who are the lowest achievers in reading in their class, regardless of any other kind of problem. It aims to return them to the average for their age in a relatively short time.

Reading recovery has been around for some time and we have supported it throughout that period. That is why we are pleased to support the “Every child a reader” project, which is expanding the availability of reading recovery and exploring the wider use of the skilled literacy experts who deliver it. “Every child a reader” is placing specialist literacy teachers who are trained in reading recovery into schools to support those children who are most at risk of not learning to read.

The three-year project is supported and funded in partnership with charitable trusts and the business sector. We are contributing £4.55 million to “Every child a reader” over three years. I heard what my hon. Friend said about his offer to contribute locally in Nottingham, which I am sure will be heard through the airwaves. Helping more children to learn to read is one of the surest ways of making a real difference to their lives. By re-engaging existing reading recovery teachers and training new ones, we are creating a powerful resource in our primary schools. Those teachers are providing invaluable support to children with significant literacy difficulties.

Our involvement in “Every child a reader” offers us the opportunity to harness the expertise of reading recovery teachers. It will enable us to explore the potential for those teachers to support tailored literacy teaching more broadly within a school, with an impact beyond those children who receive intensive one-to-one support. “Every child a reader” will also provide us with valuable information about how intensive early literacy support can be provided in the future. If we want all children to succeed in life, we must ensure that they can all read well.

An evaluation report of the first year of “Every child a reader” is published next week and I look forward to reading it, as I know my hon. Friend does too. In some respects it would perhaps have been nice to have this debate just after publication, but I look forward to reading it and taking the issue from there. My hon. Friend has invited Ministers along to that event next week, and I hope that the Department will consider the invitation favourably. I congratulate him on securing this worthwhile debate, which has helped to highlight some of the important work that is taking place out there.

I congratulate hon. Members in all parts of the Chamber on speaking above the noise, which I do not regard as acceptable. Word has been sent to try to get the problem dealt with, and at the end of this sitting I shall write to the Chairman of Ways and Means to seek to ensure that we get round the problem and that it does not intrude on debates in the future. It is not fair on hon. Members who secure an Adjournment debate to have it interrupted in that way.