Sound Reading System and Literacy — House of Commons, 2018-06-14
Topic: Education
Anne Frances Milton (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. English—literacy, in particular—is an essential foundation for success in education. I am very happy to lend my ear to this critical subject. The hon. Lady rightly pointed out that the literacy rates in this country are not as good as they should be. I think that slightly less than 25% of adults have the literacy skills of an 11-year-old or below. As the hon. Lady said, it is important to consider the impact of that. People who do not have literacy skills are excluded from so much of the world around them. In fact, all the important messages that we want to get to people about a huge number of things, including health and jobs, are simply lost It is vital that children learn to read from an early age. This is the key to understanding the rest of the curriculum. Children who struggle with language at the age of five are about six times less likely to reach the expected standard in English at age 11 than children who had good language skills at the age of five, and they are about 11 times less likely to reach the expected standard in maths. For that reason, we have strengthened the national curriculum to focus on developing reading and writing ability and put phonics at its heart. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards, who is passionate about this and has done so much work and driven through so much change Phonics is an important approach to the teaching of reading and some aspects of writing. It involves developing phonemic awareness by connecting the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters. I am sure that the hon. Lady knows much of this, but it is important to put it on the record. Synthetic phonics taught in a systematic way is the most effective method of teaching reading to all children. Combined with a language-rich curriculum, synthetic phonics has been shown to develop positive attitudes towards literacy, which is so important for children. The national curriculum requires the teaching of systematic phonics alongside pupils developing a wide vocabulary, speaking and listening competently and reading widely and often I think it is fair to say that since 2010, the Government have turbo-charged the effective teaching of phonics. We have placed it at the heart of the curriculum, and we introduced the annual phonics screening check in 2012 for pupils at the end of year 1. Pupils have been doing the 2018 check this week. We provided £23.7 million of match funding for resources and training for 14,000 schools between 2011 and 2013—the hon. Lady rightly pointed out the importance of training teachers to do this—and we have incorporated phonics into the teachers’ standards, which are the baseline expectation for teachers’ professional practice In "Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential", published in December 2017, we set out our key ambitions for improving social mobility, including closing the word gap in early language and literacy. By the age of three, disadvantaged children are on average already almost a full year and a half behind those from a more affluent background in their early language development. We have made a good start: by 2020 we will be spending around £6 billion on free entitlements, tax-free childcare and childcare support, which is more than any previous Government We have already seen progress, with those labours coming to fruition. For example, there is near universal take-up of the 15 hours for all three and four-year-olds; 71%—just short of three quarters—of eligible two-year-olds now take up the entitlement, up from 58% in 2015; 71% of children achieve a good level of development, up from 60% in 2014; and we have closed the gap between children in receipt of free school meals and their peers by two percentage points since 2014 This week, pupils across England will be taking the light-touch phonics screening check, and we have used that check to measure the improvement over time in pupils’ phonics success. Since its introduction, the proportion of pupils meeting the expected standard in the phonics screening check at the end of year 1 has steadily increased, with 81% of pupils meeting the expected standard in 2017, up from 58% in 2012. I am giving the hon. Lady a lot of figures, but I think they are important because they show that progress is being made. It has to be said that all this is delivered through the very hard work of our good teachers An additional 154,000 children are on track to become fluent readers. In 2017, the great majority—89%—of pupils who met the expected standard in the phonics screening check at the end of year 1 went on to reach the expected standard in reading at the end of key stage 1. Getting those fundamentals right at an early age is critical for progressing to reading fluently and for pleasure, which is particularly important to me. Reading well is a good indicator of success in later life The results of the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study—PIRLS—put the success of our increased emphasis on phonics and our continued focus on raising education standards on a global scale. England’s nine-year-old pupils achieved their highest average score since PIRLS began, and we rose up the rankings from joint tenth in 2011 to joint eighth. That is to be commended. The pupils who took part in the study are the first to be assessed since Government education reforms in 2010 that saw the introduction of the more rigorous, knowledge-rich primary school curriculum introduced in 2014 However, despite the very real and measurable progress, more must be done and, backed by a £26.3 million investment, we are creating a national network of 35 English hubs, and a centre of excellence for literacy teaching to improve literacy across England. It is up to schools to choose the approach and programme that is right for them and their pupils within this framework. I understand that the sound reading system, the programme championed by the hon. Lady, incorporates training alongside its teaching materials, as she described so well. This is good, and indeed, a number of the more widely used phonics programmes do this. A wide range of commercial products is available, and schools should choose the product that best meets their needs and those of their pupils.