Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that all primary school children reach the expected level of achievement in (a) reading, (b) writing and (c) maths.

The department’s 2030 ambition is 90% of primary school children achieving expected standards in reading, writing and maths, and that the national GCSE average grade in both English language and mathematics increases from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030.

The department will be publishing part two of the reading framework in 2023, which will provide evidence-based, non-statutory guidance on teaching reading for years 2 to 9. Our validation of systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programmes specifies that all validated programmes must provide opportunities for children to apply their phonics knowledge to writing words and sentences. This will support schools to drive up writing standards.

In 2018, the department launched the £26.3 million English Hubs Programme. This is dedicated to improving the teaching of reading, with a focus on supporting children making the slowest progress in reading, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In 2021, we launched the £10 million accelerator fund for English and mathematics as part of the government’s education recovery package. To date, over 430 schools have been provided with funding to adopt a department-validated phonics scheme and the training to implement this successfully. Thousands of primary schools have also benefitted from additional Maths Hubs support to strengthen the teaching of the core subject.

Our national network of 40 school-led Maths Hubs is also continuing to support local schools improve the quality of their mathematics teaching based on best practice. This includes through the established £100 million Teaching for Mastery programme, which will have brought training on mastery teaching to a total of 11,000 schools across England by 2023.