Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to promote multimodal literacy as part of the new curriculum rollout.

This government’s ambition is for every child and young person to receive a rich, broad, inclusive and innovative education.

The department agrees with the Curriculum and Assessment Review that building the skills for young people to critically engage with and assess information from a range of sources, including multi-modal texts, is increasingly important.

The reformed English programme of study and English language GCSE will expose students to the study of a wider range of text types and genres, including transient texts, supporting them to analyse and challenge arguments, building media literacy.

Media literacy is an increasingly important skill to enable young people to identify “fake news” and to spot different types of mis- and disinformation, especially online.

Secure, well-founded knowledge is essential for students to understand how arguments are constructed across different types of media and to recognise the various ways in which language can be used to persuade.