Schools: Primary Curriculum

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Lord Adonis)
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Ed Balls) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

In a Written Statement on 9 January 2008, I summarised the remit of Sir Jim Rose’s independent review of the primary curriculum. Among other things, his remit includes making recommendations on introducing greater flexibility to help schools narrow the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.

In the Children’s Plan, the Government acknowledged that more needs to be done to improve outcomes and provision for children with special educational needs and to increase parental confidence that children’s educational needs are being met, including for children with dyslexia.

To encourage schools’ development of best practice in improving outcomes for children with dyslexia, my department is:

providing funding of around £1 million over three years to the No to Failure project. No to Failure is trailblazing and evaluating the impact of specialist training for teachers and specialist tuition for children with dyslexia in some schools in three local authority areas;
 

through the national strategies, rolling out to all areas this year an inclusion development programme (IDP) designed to increase knowledge and awareness of dyslexia and communication difficulties among the schools and early years workforce and improve learning outcomes for this particular group of children;
 

providing £150,000 over two financial years to enable the British Dyslexia Association to develop its helpline, which provides advice about dyslexia—including to teachers and parents; and
 

providing £250,000 over three financial years to enable Dyslexia Action to run further Partnership for Literacy pilots.
 

In this context, we have now additionally asked Sir Jim Rose, in the light of evidence, to make recommendations on the identification and teaching of children with dyslexia, and on how best to take forward the commitment in the Children’s Plan to establish a pilot scheme in which children with dyslexia will receive reading recovery support or one-to-one tuition from specialist dyslexia teachers.

We have asked Sir Jim Rose to include the following sources of evidence in developing his recommendations:

a summary of published research on the impact of specialist dyslexia teaching and reading recovery on progression and outcomes for children with dyslexia, currently being prepared by Dr Chris Singleton of Hull University;
 

evaluations of Every Child a Reader, including reading recovery, carried out by the Every Child a Chance Trust and the Institute of Education;
 

a recently published interim evaluation of the No to Failure Project’s identification of children at risk of dyslexia/specific learning difficulties;
 

No to Failure Project’s final evaluation of the progress made by children identified as being at risk of dyslexia/specific learning difficulties who have received specialist dyslexia teaching, which the project expects to publish at the end of this year.
 

Sir Jim Rose will also consult the No to Failure Project and other dyslexia organisations in considering his recommendations. He has agreed to prepare a report containing his recommendations early in 2009.