Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May I thank the Backbench Business Committee for choosing this debate and congratulate the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing it? I must confess that I had not realised that she was right honourable. I know that a very high percentage of Lib Dems have been knighted, received damehoods or been made right honourable, but in her case it is thoroughly deserved for the work she has done over many years in this House and her commitment to children’s issues, particularly that under discussion.
I also congratulate all the other speakers, including my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who is my former boss, the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who is a former Chair of the Committee, and the hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright). They will forgive me if I do not discuss their contributions—as I was going to do—given the time available.
There are a number of points to make about the achievement gap in reading between poorer children and their better-off peers. First, it is a real problem. As the right hon. Lady said, current Government statistics show that one child in every four leaves primary school unable to read well, which means that each year 130,000 children are already behind when they start secondary school. Of those, a disproportionately large number are from disadvantaged backgrounds; the proportion who leave primary school unable to read well rises to 40% for children on free school meals. We know that it is a real problem, so it is right that we are debating it today and that we will continue to do so.
Secondly, it is not a new problem. Successive Governments have made efforts to close the achievement gap. The previous Labour Government made extensive investment, politically and financially, starting with the literacy hour and progressing to schemes such as Every Child a Reader. I could cite evidence of the success of those programmes, including from the Institute for Public Policy Research’s 2012 report, “A long division: Closing the attainment gap in England’s secondary schools”, which clearly showed that the attainment gap between the richest and poorest students narrowed between 2003 and 2011. Despite that, we know that poorer children are still much more likely to have fallen behind in reading by age 11 than their better-off peers.
Thirdly, the issue really matters. Being behind in reading at age 11 has a massive impact on an individual’s life chances, but it also has a massive impact on the country as a whole. More people who are out of work or on low pay are functionally illiterate—one in four in both instances. More pupils who are excluded from school lack literacy skills. More young offenders and prisoners are poor readers. The list goes on. We can reasonably extrapolate from those statistics and observations that at the macro level crime is higher and economic growth is lower as a result.
Fourthly, this issue has become party political. In my opinion, it should not be. I am not trying to blame anyone in particular for that phenomenon; we are all politicians and we all have to make our case in order to win power and govern in what we believe to be the country’s best interests. That is the trade we are in and, in my view, it is an honourable one. However, as a former school teacher from a working-class background, I hope that it is possible to reach a consensus on a longer-term approach to making progress on closing the achievement gap in reading.
Of course, many of the root causes of the problem lie outside the immediate influence of school. Many parents are poor readers, as we know from the statistics, and they are therefore not in a strong position to help their children at home, even when well motivated to do so. Fifthly, therefore, this issue is not just about schools. We need to develop policies to support parents and families outside schools, especially in the early years. We are concerned about the overall impact of Government policies, whether in relation to Sure Start, as was mentioned earlier, or financial support to poorer families. Whatever the level of spending available to any Government, we ought to be able to agree on the types of policies beyond school that will help to tackle the problem.
I noticed a press release today from the Sutton Trust pointing out new analysis showing that parents from the richest fifth of households are four times more likely to pay for extra classes outside school for their children than those from the poorest fifth. I think that we should certainly look at the policy implications for supporting initiatives to give extra support, outside school or at the end of school, to pupils from poorer backgrounds. There are quite a few good initiatives out there for that, and the pupil premium might be a good way of supporting them.
Sixthly, we should make every effort, as politicians, to evaluate what works, including in schools. That is why Opposition Front Benchers welcomed the setting up of the Education Endowment Foundation, which the hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) referred to. It gives us the opportunity to start doing what so many people tell us they want us to do in education, whatever political party we belong to: to set longer-term policies.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I will be the one to decide that. The maths is that you have eight minutes each and there will then be a minute for the right hon. Lady.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for that and apologise for intervening earlier.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) for securing this debate on what is, in everyone’s view, the most important issue in education. It has been a very good and well-informed debate.
It cannot be acceptable that in 2014 almost 18,000 boys aged 11 cannot read any better than a seven-year-old, nor that in 2013, one in five pupils on free school meals did not achieve the expected standard in reading at key stage 1. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said in an excellent contribution, poor reading can lead to behavioural problems, with one in 10 14-year-olds who are poor readers becoming persistent truants, compared with just 2% of other children.
Nothing in education is more important than making sure that every child can read. To paraphrase my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, if you don’t learn to read, you can’t read to learn. Of course, our concern about reading standards should not simply be about the utilitarian benefits of reading. In and of itself, reading is one of life’s great joys. No child should be denied the chance to experience that joy for themselves, no matter where they live or what their background. She spoke about delving into other worlds. That is a good phrase to show why reading is so wonderful. We want all children to become fluent and enthusiastic readers. We want them to have the solid grounding in the systematic synthetic phonics that they need to decode the words on the page; the knowledge and appreciation to understand what they are reading; and the enthusiasm and experience to develop a lifelong love of books.
As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman)—I call him my hon. Friend because of our years of service together during his chairmanship of the Select Committee—these issues start very early. For some children, they start even before they are born. Research shows that nothing is more fundamental to a child’s later outcomes than early language development. It is the key to mastering communication and literacy later on. Of course, a huge part of that development depends on parents reading, singing and talking to their children. The early years sector also has a crucial role to play, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said. We know that high-quality early education from the age of two has a lasting impact on children’s development.
Nowhere is the need to get children off to a flying start more pressing than for disadvantaged children. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, there is an 18-month vocabulary gap between children on low incomes and children on high incomes when they arrive at school. If that is left unchecked, they continue to slip further and further behind. That is why, from this September, we are giving some 260,000 of the country’s most disadvantaged two-year-olds 570 hours of funded early education. That is double the number of children who were eligible last year.
Early years education has to be of a high quality. As my right hon. Friend said, quality is as important as quantity when it comes to early years education. We are also introducing reforms to the national curriculum, which come into force today, giving ever higher importance to reading and literacy.
Of course, all of that depends on children mastering the essential skill of decoding in the first place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) said, it is right that we should base our practice on what the evidence says works. International evidence shows that the systematic teaching of phonics is the most effective way to teach children to read. It helps all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, become fluent readers.
We are absolutely committed to ensuring that the high-quality teaching of phonics in primary schools continues, which is why we have introduced the light-touch phonics check. In the pilot in 2011, 32% of children in the 300 schools involved passed that check. In 2012 that rose to 58%, and last year it had risen to 69% of all pupils meeting the expected standard. That was a significant rise, but just 56% of pupils on free school meals met that standard compared with 72% of other pupils—there was a 17 percentage point gap, which we need to close. Some local authorities, such as Newham, did extremely well in that check, with 76% of pupils passing, but others did not achieve so well, including some in affluent areas. I was encouraged by the initiative to improve reading in Liverpool that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby described. I am sure that we will see a significant rise in Liverpool’s phonics check results as the years go by. We want to ensure that all children are secure in their basic phonic reading skills.
One point on which I did not agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole was the starting date of formal education. There is no evidence that it is damaging. The Cambridge review of primary education in 2010 found no clear relationship between starting age and reading achievement, but some studies have found a small and temporary advantage to younger starting ages. My view is that delaying the start of formal education and the teaching of reading would widen the attainment gap, as children from more affluent and educated homes would learn to read at home and other children would not. That gap would continue to grow exponentially once they started their education. In fact, the majority of parents are happy for their child to begin school in the September following their fourth birthday. As we know, and as my right hon. Friend pointed out, children develop at different rates, particularly in the early years, and it is to be expected that some parents will feel that their child is simply not ready to start school when they are four. To allow for that, the admissions code makes it clear that parents can request that their child attends part-time or that their entry is delayed until they reach the point of compulsory education.
The Government’s overall plan for education is to raise academic standards, make every local school a good school and significantly improve standards of behaviour in our schools. We want to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds, not just in reading but across all academic subjects. However, reading represents the foundation of education, and we need all young people to be reading fluently and with increasing speed by the time they reach key stage 2. We need them to read voraciously throughout primary school, so that they not only become accomplished readers but develop the habit of reading for long stretches of time. That is how we can ensure that every young person achieves their full potential to be as well educated as their ability will allow. That means that they can benefit from all the opportunities that this country has to offer.