Schools: Reading Initiative

14:48:00

Baroness Sharp of Guildford
asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether the results of the 2005–06 evaluation of the Every Child a Reader initiative are yet available; and whether extra support is now being given to primary schools to help pupils catch up before the transition to secondary school.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Lord Adonis)
My Lords, a largely positive assessment of the first year of the Every Child a Reader initiative was published on 7 November, and a copy has been placed in the Library of the House. The Government have provided the Every Child a Reader project with £4.55 million on top of the substantial additional resources available for literacy support through rising school budgets and the primary literacy strategy.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. However, I remind him that for the past two years key stage 2 results for children at the end of primary school have not met government targets. Does he agree that the Every Child a Reader initiative, in which children aged six who are not readers are targeted and can catch up by as much as 21 months in as little as four to five months, is one worth backing and that the Government should put long-term money into?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, as I indicated, we have been backing it with £4.5 million, in partnership with others making £10 million for that initiative. We are looking at the results with great care. We have a spending review coming up and in that we will look at whether it is possible to take further work forward in that area. The noble Baroness is absolutely right: too few 11 year-olds are still not up to standard in reading. They start to fall behind in the very earliest days of primary school; they can largely be identified at the age of six; and they need intensive support. However, I add that if we got the teaching of reading better across all primary schools from the moment that children start in them, which is what we are seeking to do with greater attention to synthetic phonics, fewer would fall behind by the age of six in the first place.

Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, what is being done to address the problem of the 4 million adults in the UK who still do not have the literacy skills expected of an 11 year-old? Given that many of those people will be parents, how can they read to their children—probably the most important one-to-one relationship—if they cannot read themselves?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, we are making a very big investment in adult basic skills to meet precisely the urgent concern that the noble Baroness has rightly highlighted. That has produced a very significant decrease in the number of adults without literacy skills. Those courses in basic literacy are available free of charge to parents, many of them provided by further education colleges in partnership with schools, so it is possible to provide literacy support for the parents directly alongside support for the children.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, have the Government evaluated the benefit to communication skills of children in primary school learning a second language and the effect of those increased communication skills on their ability then to learn to read?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, I am not aware of a specific evaluation that links the two—that links learning of a second language with learning of the first language—but, as the noble Baroness will be aware, it is our policy to make teaching of second languages universally available in primary schools. We have significantly increased the proportion of primary schools where a second language is now being taught and, as she will be aware, our policy is that by 2012 that should be an entitlement in all primary schools across England.

Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, does the Minister agree that children should have an appropriate level of verbal communication before they can be expected to deal with systematic phonics? Does he therefore agree it should be the teacher who decides what kind of teaching to use to teach children to read in the very early stages, rather than restricting teachers to a very limited range of commercial phonics packages?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, we are not talking only about commercial phonics packages. The advice issued by my department in the primary national strategies has intensive support. For example, the Playing with Sounds handbook is available free of charge to all schools. The noble Baroness is right to say that, ultimately, it must be down to the professional judgment of the teacher, but teachers look to us for advice and guidance. We give strong advice and guidance based on best practice in the teaching of reading. Advice that we have received from Ofsted and other experts in the field points strongly to the relevance and importance of synthetic phonics as the first and fast way to teach children to read.

Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, some three weeks ago, we discussed the question of speech and language therapists in relation to getting young offenders prepared and ready for education. It was declared that they have a tremendous role in getting hold of children at the age of five and preparing them for education. We were told that responsibility for funding those people rested with primary care trusts. Who is responsible for funding the provision of speech and language therapists for children in school before they enter education and at the basic stages of primary school?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, speech and language services themselves are the responsibility of primary care trusts. They are a health service. Of course, a lot of professionals associated with the teaching of speech and language will in fact be part of the education service and will be located in schools.

Baroness Sharples
My Lords, what proportion of children have English as their second language?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, I do not have that precise proportion to hand, but I will write to the noble Baroness.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, was the Minister as impressed as I was by the really quite significant improvement in the children least able to read, as a result of the personal input of the Reading Recovery teachers? Not only that, which was impressive enough, but their employment had a much wider effect on the abilities of other children to progress in other literary areas. What lesson does that point to for the future deployment of skilled teachers?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, we believe that the early results of the Every Child a Reader programme are promising, in precisely the way that the noble Baroness set out. The track record of Reading Recovery is strong, with about 80 per cent of children who complete the programme achieving national targets a year later. The early results of the latest pilot programme that we are taking forward show an average gain of 21 months in the reading age over four to five months of teaching. However, it is a very expensive programme—it costs about £2,500 per child—and we have to weigh up the gain with the expense in terms of the other sources of funding and support available to schools directly.

Lord Avebury
My Lords, my question is further to that asked by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. If a very high proportion of youngsters coming into the young offender institutions are suffering from speech, language and communications difficulties, does that not indicate that the schools are falling down on the job and that they really need to reinforce the number of speech and language therapists whom they employ?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, it certainly indicates that schools are falling down on the job. That has been a big historic problem with our school system; far too many children, particularly the sorts of children going on into young offender institutions whom the noble Lord mentioned, are not being properly taught in schools. I completely agree; but it is not simply the responsibility of the speech and language services to put that right. It is a basic function of every primary school in the country that its teachers should be effective at teaching children to read. If we get that right, we do not need these remedial and catch-up services later on in the system.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that it is well worth spending £2,000 on a six year-old if you are not going to have to spend £60,000 on him when he is 16 and in a young offender institution?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, I believe that could well be the case.

Lord Laidlaw
My Lords, at a secondary school with which I am associated, no less than 40 per cent of the children entering the school read inadequately and have to have foundation classes. I am told by the primary school teachers that this is because they have insufficient teachers in year 6. Will more funding be available for primary schools to increase the number of teachers or teaching assistants for year-6 reading adequacy?

Lord Adonis
My Lords, the budgets of primary schools are rising steadily year on year. There is a national average increase of about 5 per cent in real terms in primary school budgets this year so, for the most part, the issue is not a shortage of resource for primary schools but the deployment of teachers. It is particularly vital to see that they have the properly trained teachers at the right level in the school. I do not believe that any primary school can legitimately say that an absence of resource is the reason why they teach inadequately in year 6.