Primary Education: Literacy

(asked on 31st January 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the trends of the difference in attainment of phonics standards between boys and girls aged seven in England and Wales in each of the last five years; and if she will make a statement.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 13th February 2017

Good literacy is the foundation for all achievement in education and critical for everyday life. We have strengthened the curriculum to focus on developing pupils’ reading and writing skills and placed a renewed focus on the requirement for pupils to be taught to read using systematic phonics.

Since the introduction of the phonics check in 2012, 147,000 more six-year-olds are on track to becoming fluent readers. Almost 9 in 10 pupils (89%) who met the expected standard of phonics decoding in year 1 went on to reach the expected standard in reading at the end of Key Stage 1.

A higher proportion of girls than boys meet the phonics standard at aged 7 – there is a gap of 4 percentage points in 2015 and 2016. The gap in 2013 and 2014 was 5 percentage points.

Table 1 below shows the percentage of boys and girls aged 7 in state funded schools meeting the required standard in phonics decoding in each of the last four years. There was no test for 7 year olds in 2012.

Table 1

Year 2 Phonics Screening Check Results

Boys

Girls

2012

N/A

N/A

2013

83%

88%

2014

86%

91%

2015

88%

92%

2016

89%

93%

The 2016 Key Stage 1 assessments were the first to reflect the new, more challenging National Curriculum. As a result, figures for 2016 are not comparable to those for earlier years.

The 2016 Key Stage 1 reading and writing teacher assessments show that nearly 3 in 4 pupils (74%) achieved the new expected standard in reading and nearly 2 in 3 pupils (65%) achieved the new expected standard in writing.

Table 2 below shows the percentage of pupils who achieved Level 2 or above under the previous assessment system in reading and writing in each of the last four years.

Table 2

Key Stage 1

Reading Level 2 or above

Writing Level 2 or above

2012

87%

83%

2013

89%

85%

2014

90%

86%

2015

90%

88%

The Department is not responsible for education standards in Wales as this is a devolved matter.

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