In Barking and Dagenham we shall be increasing our support for schools by expanding the Key Stage 2 initiative to involve infant schools. We shall align our project with the national model. By September 1998, every primary school in the Authority will have the opportunity to join. Our aim is to support headteachers in the management and monitoring of their work to improve standards in reading and writing and to do much of the writing of the curriculum. By relieving teachers of much of the burden of selecting texts and writing teaching materials, they are then able to focus their time on the most important task of teaching the children in their class.
Literacy is also high on the agenda in our secondary schools.
Barking and Dagenham has won major government funding against heavy competition to develop its pilot Year 7 literacy project, which aims to help as many pupils as possible make rapid progress to reach a competent level of reading and writing by the end of Year 7. All our secondary schools have the opportunity to be involved. We expect this project to attract considerable interest at a national level as we are one of only 22 LEAs who have been awarded these grants. The most successful projects will attract further funding and materials and approaches will be disseminated to other areas. Finally Barking and Dagenham has also been successful in its bid to run summer literacy schools.