Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to improve the quality of primary education.

We have placed phonics at the heart of the early teaching of reading as we want all children to be fluent readers by the time they leave primary school. Results from this year’s phonics screening check show that, since its introduction in 2012, over 147,000 more six year olds are now on track to become excellent readers.

We are also investing £41m to enable primary schools to introduce highly effective south-east Asian mastery teaching methods, and we introduced a new more rigorous primary curriculum in 2014 raising standards in reading, writing and maths throughout the primary school phase.