Achievement Gap in Reading

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing this debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I pay tribute to the work that the right hon. Lady has done on this matter throughout her time in this House, including the questions that she has raised as parliamentary champion for Save the Children. The Save the Children report “Too Young to Fail”, which she referred to at the beginning of her speech, is very powerful and reminds us of the scale of the challenge that we still face. The report says that by the time children are seven, nearly 80% of the later differences in GCSE results between better-off and poorer children have already been determined.

Two years ago, in 2012, one in seven of seven-year-olds—approximately 76,000 pupils across the country—was still not reaching the expected level in reading. As the right hon. Lady explained so powerfully, children from the poorest backgrounds are much more likely than their better-off peers to fall behind with their reading. As she said, this is not just an immediate challenge for education, but something that stores up problems later on. I am talking about the risks of crime, economic failure and behaviour issues later on in education.

Studies show that almost one in 10 of the 14-year-olds who had been very poor readers at the end of primary school became persistent truants compared with an average figure of around 2%. We know from Ofsted and others that the group that now faces the biggest challenges in literacy are white British children, particularly boys but also girls, and that is part of the challenge that we need to face.

I welcome what the right hon. Lady said about poverty and about the difference that good and outstanding schools make. I am proud of the schools in my constituency that buck the trend and deliver the best results in English and mathematics at age 11. That shows that with the right ethos and approach and high standards of teaching and learning in our schools, we can make a difference.

When Joe Anderson took over the leadership of Liverpool city council after the 2010 local elections, he invited my right hon. Friend Baroness Estelle Morris, the former Secretary of State, to lead a cross-party commission on the future of education in Liverpool.

Between 2000 and 2010, Liverpool’s results at both 11 and 16 improved dramatically. Estelle’s report has been entitled “From Better to Best”, making the point that although progress has been made, there is still a lot more that we need to do in Liverpool. One of her recommendations was that Liverpool should become the foremost reading city in the country and that schools and their partners should give priority to reading so that no child, if capable, would leave primary school unable to read. Out of Baroness Morris’s report, we have the “City of Readers” campaign, run jointly by the mayor, Liverpool city council, the Liverpool learning partnership, which brings together schools and other educationists across the city, and the Reader Organisation. The campaign seeks to fulfil the goal of making Liverpool the foremost reading city in the country.

The aim is partly to promote reading for pleasure for residents of all ages across the city but also to focus on the achievement gap that is at the heart of the debate today. There are many initiatives, none of which involves charges for parents or children, and the idea is to have wide access for the community as a whole. For example, this summer Liverpool had the “Book It!” summer school, devised for children who need support with reading to help them make the transition from primary to secondary school. That was a free summer school for local children, supported by the local authority and the Liverpool learning partnership.

There has been a big emphasis on using existing cultural events in the city to promote reading. The “Giant Spectacular” in Newsham park in my constituency earlier in the summer gave such an opportunity, with a focus on readings from Roald Dahl as well as of love letters from the first world war. The recent Liverpool international music festival held beach reads, encouraging families to enjoy reading together. Readers in residence schemes have been put in place whereby a reader from the fantastic Reader Organisation spends two months in schools reading with selected pupils who need extra support and devising groups to promote reading for pleasure. Many schools have been involved, including a number from my constituency, such as Holly Lodge, Mab Lane, Dovecot primary and Our Lady and St Philomena’s primary. There has been a focus on continuing professional development, in particular promoting reading for pleasure, and Liverpool has risen to the challenge of targeting those adults whose life opportunities are held back by illiteracy.

At the heart of that is social justice, and as the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said, this is not a new problem. If we can crack it and get it right, we will make a real difference to the life chances of many children and, in particular, children in some of the communities that I represent who often face great challenges from poverty and deprivation. Reading for social justice, reading for pleasure and reading as a crucial part of our economic future as a country—I hope Liverpool will have something to teach the rest of the country by being the city of reading.