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Sir Gavin Williamson
That is absolutely fantastic news. It is a testament to the work that has been done and to the focus we have had in this country on reading over the last 14 years, and we have to continue to build on that. My hon. Friend mentioned Tolkien; it is not necessarily widely known, but the Shire in “The Lord of the Rings” was based on the Kinver Edge rock houses in my constituency, and I strongly encourage people to come and visit them—[Interruption.] I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is going to intervene and disagree with me on that.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I am delighted to intervene on that point. I congratulate my right hon. Friend for the points he is making, but Worcestershire would certainly dispute the suggestion that the Shire was based on Staffordshire. Tolkien enjoyed looking down from the Malvern hills and comparing the black Black Country, which may have been the inspiration for Mordor, with the green shire below him.
Sir Gavin Williamson
I fear that the point is not going to be resolved in this debate, but it is fair to say that I am right and my hon. Friend is wrong. I will, however, move swiftly on.
The Department for Education plays an incredibly important role in the promotion of World Book Day, working with the Publishers Association and schools and creating the underpinning to ensure that we get our children reading. We have seen children make amazing progress up the PISA scales in terms of reading outcomes and understanding literature as part of our curriculum. That is also true of phonics, which I know is close to the heart of my right hon. Friend the Minister, who has championed it over the years, along with many of us. We know that phonics delivers results, and we are seeing that in the international tables. Sadly, we are not necessarily seeing the same results in every component part of the United Kingdom, and I urge those parts that have not embraced phonics as a central part of developing, promoting and teaching reading to look at it as a matter of urgency.
I particularly welcome the DFE’s £60 million English hubs programme—an intervention focusing on designing and developing the expertise to teach reading. Getting that right is critical, and a number of us in the Chamber have probably seen that work. Getting the very best teaching, as well as encouraging, developing and, most importantly, sharing it right across our schools, is critical for all our children.
Libraries have already been touched on, and it is so important that children from right across the country always have access to a good library and the opportunity to pick up a good book and to be transported to a different world and a different country—or even Worcestershire. With the support of that book, they can go anywhere their imagination takes them. The £20 million libraries improvement fund is certainly welcome, but I suggest that we need to do more in that area. There are some concerns; we saw library book stocks decrease by 11% across England, Wales and Scotland between 2021 and 2022. We need the best possible range of stock in our libraries so that when youngsters have that book that they picked up on World Book Day, they have the opportunity to feed and develop their enthusiasm.
It is important that we thank all the people who have been instrumental in creating the structure for World Book Day. We must also thank all the teachers, teaching assistants, support staff and parents, and the children themselves, who make World Book Day the living, wonderful, beautiful thing it is.
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard, and to take part in this debate—or is it a discussion? It felt more like a discussion: sometimes a discursive discussion, but a very good one. Even as politicians, we will probably struggle to find things to disagree on. As the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said, this is one of those things that brought so many of us into politics, both directly and indirectly: seeking ways to improve the life chances of those who are disadvantaged, and wanting to open up the discovery of the world, including the literary world, to as many people as possible through the power of education.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on securing the debate and on having the foresight to apply for it. I thank everybody who has taken part: my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Theo Clarke) and for Worcester (Mr Walker), my right hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) and for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), and the hon. Members for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who comes from the beautiful County Down. Those who spoke and those who intervened made interesting and insightful points.
The hon. Member for Strangford reminded us of the variety of what we are talking about when we speak of books. Although perhaps we think first of novels or children’s books, World Book Day is also about biography, non-fiction and eyewitness accounts. The hon. Member for Glenrothes rightly mentioned the joy of discovering a new genre, something we were not expecting. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North spoke of the joy of rediscovery in reading with our children or coming into contact with books that our children and their friends have. This may be a debate for another day, but we might reflect on how, in a world where so much is about electronica, it is wonderful to celebrate the simplicity of a book and being able to lose oneself in a story—me time, if you like, which I would argue is good for the soul.
I was struck by the very touching story that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster told about her time volunteering. She also reminded us about the importance of book clubs, a category that has recently grown significantly; I did not know about the Conservative women MPs’ book club. She took us on an interesting journey through the literary chapters of her own life, as well as through the rich literary heritage of the two cities.
There was a competitive spat with my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester about who was from where. I will gently say that I would never join in that type of competitiveness. I will just mention that I represent East Hampshire, the undisputed home of Jane Austen.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said that she was a Famous Five girl. I was a Secret Seven boy, but I agree with her on just about everything else. It was only a month ago that we were last here discussing the importance of reading. It is a real pleasure to be here today to recognise and celebrate World Book Day. We all look forward to tomorrow.
The Government wholeheartedly believe that all pupils deserve to be taught a knowledge-rich curriculum that promotes extensive reading, both for pleasure and for consuming information. The texts that our young people read play a significant part in their wider development, broadening their horizons and introducing them to new ideas and different perspectives. Reading is a principal way of acquiring knowledge about the world, language and vocabulary. Such knowledge eases access to the rest of the curriculum. It really does underpin all education.
Ensuring that pupils become engaged with reading is one of the most important ways to make a difference to their life chances. Evidence shows that reading for pleasure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, is more important for children’s educational development than even their family circumstances or their parents’ educational background or income. That is why the Government have introduced a range of measures to promote reading and improve literacy standards, as part of that mission to level up education standards across England.
We have strengthened the national curriculum to focus on reading, requiring pupils to study a range of books, poems and plays throughout their schooling, to encourage a lifelong love of literature and appreciation of our rich and varied literary heritage. But we recognise that for children to develop a love of books, we need to build a strong foundation in reading early on, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire rightly said. That is why many of the measures the Government have introduced support the effective teaching of reading right from the start.
In 2021, we introduced landmark reforms at the early years foundation stage, to improve early years outcomes for all children, particularly those who are disadvantaged. The reforms to curriculum and assessment requirements focused on the critical areas that build the foundations for later success, including language development and reading. We have invested in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention—NELI—improving the speech and language skills of an estimated 150,000 children in reception classes. More than 320,000 primary school children have been screened to identify those with language development difficulties, who will receive targeted language support.
We also recently launched Start for Life’s Little Moments Together home-learning environment campaign, in partnership with the Department of Health and Social Care. That campaign follows the Hungry Little Minds home-learning environment campaign of a few years ago, and aims to increase rates of school-readiness, by alerting parents to the importance of the early years and their own critical role in their child’s development for school-readiness.
As we were reminded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, among others, to drive up the teaching of reading in primary schools, we have focused on high-quality systematic synthetic phonics teaching for every child, starting as soon as children join in reception. The evidence for phonics is indisputable. Phonics approaches have consistently been found to be effective in supporting younger readers to master the basics of reading, with an average impact of four months of additional progress, compared with other approaches.
Because of that, since 2010 we have placed phonics at the heart of the curriculum. In 2012 we introduced the phonics screening check, to assess pupils at the end of year 1. We have also incorporated phonics into the teachers’ standards, the baseline of expectation for teachers’ professional practice; placed a greater focus on phonics and the teaching of reading in Ofsted’s framework; and supported schools to choose good phonics programmes, by publishing a list of schemes validated by the Department. Our focus on phonics is making a clear impact. When we introduced the phonics screening check in 2012, 58% of pupils in year 1 met the expected standard. By 2023, that figure was 79%.
To support schools to embed phonics into their practice, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire mentioned, we have funded the English hubs programme since 2018. The programme has so far supported more than 1,600 school intensively, with a focus on helping those children making the slowest progress in reading, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. It includes Chesterton English hub, which offers support to primary schools in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster.
That programme is having a palpable impact. I saw that at first hand during a recent visit to the Knowledge Schools Trust English hub last month. The programme’s impact is also measurable. Schools supported intensively as partner schools by English hubs outperform non-partner schools by around 7 percentage points, when comparing the change in year 1 phonics screening check results between 2019 and 2022.
English hubs are also doing excellent work to develop reading for pleasure and early language. For example, in 2021 we rolled out the “Transforming your school’s reading culture” programme, which was developed by hub schools and sector experts to support reading for pleasure. Reaching around 600 schools last year, English hubs are now into the third year of delivering this research-based continuing professional development programme, which trains teachers in schools across the country to ensure that every pupil in their school develops a love of books.
Of course, teachers play a vital and irreplaceable role in inspiring a love of literature. The Government have committed to supporting their professional development, including with the national professional qualification for leading literacy in October 2022. As part of our education recovery plan, we announced £184 million of funding to deliver 150,000 scholarships across a range of NPQs by the end of 2024. The NPQLL saw 3,064 funded starts in its first year, which was 8.6% of all funded NPQ starts.
The hub programme cannot reach every school, and the NPQ programme cannot reach every teacher, so, to ensure that all teachers have clear guidance to support their teaching of reading, we published the reading framework. Updated last year, the framework offers non-statutory guidance on best practice in the teaching of reading from reception up to year 9. It recognises the importance of encouraging a love of reading, including the vital importance of pupil choice and access to a wide variety of books. It also includes helpful guidance for schools on how to organise the school library, book corner or book stock to make reading accessible and attractive to readers. I thank the organisations and authors who work tirelessly to promote the importance of libraries. Alongside school libraries, public libraries have a strong offer to support children’s development as readers beyond school, and are part of the vital social and cultural infrastructure of the country.
Our clear focus on reading is making an impact, and it has been recognised internationally. In the progress in international reading literacy study—better known as PIRLS—England came fourth out of 43 countries and first among western nations. I am hugely grateful to all the primary school teachers, teaching assistants and other staff, alongside the parents and children, whose commitment to reading and embracing the phonics approach introduced by the Government has made that possible. Indeed, the strongest predictor of PIRLS performance was the year 1 phonics screening check mark, with higher marks predicting higher PIRLS scores.
I absolutely recognise the important contribution of charities and organisations to promote the importance of reading for pleasure, and that very much includes our subject today, World Book Day. We should also mention the National Literacy Trust overall, the Reading Agency, BookTrust and many more. World Book Day is a fantastic worldwide celebration of books and reading marked in more than 100 countries around the world. Its book and book token scheme, distributed through schools and early years settings, aims to appeal to all children, particularly those who need encouragement to read for pleasure. I thank those charities for the enormous contribution they make.
The National Literacy Trust’s National Storytelling Week took place last month. It, too, is a wonderful annual event that celebrates the power of sharing stories. The charity provides excellent storytelling resources to early years practitioners, teachers and families to help to bring the magic of storytelling to life and strengthen children’s imaginations, critical thinking and literacy skills.
Like everyone else here, I look forward to celebrating World Book Day. Some of us will celebrate it tomorrow and some of us on Friday in our constituencies. I think some have already started, and we are all sort of celebrating it together today. I will be celebrating with the children and staff at High Hazels Academy in Sheffield, and I am excited that best-selling children’s author and artist Rob Biddulph will be there too. The Secretary of State is also busy celebrating World Book Day. She attended the grand final of the BBC 500 Words competition last week to celebrate the finalists of one of the UK’s most prestigious children’s writing competitions, and yesterday she visited Hampden Gurney Church of England Primary School to celebrate World Book Day with the children and staff there.
The last time I spoke in a debate in Westminster Hall I concluded by saying, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North was kind enough to repeat, that
“we cannot knock down barriers for children if we do not teach them to read well.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2024; Vol. 744, c. 137WH.]
I reiterate that point today, as I know the hon. Lady does. The Department is firmly committed to improving literacy for all pupils, ensuring that all children can benefit from high-quality teaching, and giving them a solid base on which to build as they progress through school and beyond with a lifelong love of books.