UK govt £533m drive to boost reading standards comes to
nought
(LONDON) The British government has spent half a billion pounds in
a failed attempt to boost reading standards in primary schools in
England, an academic report said yesterday.
The independent study said the government's National Literacy
Strategy had cost £553 million in the seven years to 2005 but had
'almost no impact' on reading levels.
'In essence, standards have remained constant,' said Durham
University Professor of Education Peter Tymms in the report, part
of the largest review of primary education for 40 years.
'Standards of reading have remained more or less the same over a
very long time - since the 1950s,' he said in a study of existing
research for the Cambridge University-based Primary Review.
The newly-elected Labour government launched the National Literacy
Strategy in 1998 as one of the pillars of Prime Minister Tony
Blair's mantra of 'education, education, education'.
The programme introduced the daily 'Literacy hour' to primary
schools and has been credited by the government with increasing the
number of 11-year-olds reaching the expected Level 4 reading
standard.
National test results rose strongly up to 2000 before flattening
out in recent years but Prof Tymms said there had been little
actual improvement overall when measured against objective
standards. He said studies, including his own, had shown the rise
in results was misleading and exaggerated the changes in pupils'
actual attainment.
The literacy strategy had also been distorted by the pressure on
schools to hit government performance goals, with less able pupils
falling behind. 'Resources and effort were targeted at those pupils
who were within range of achieving a Level 4 because that is the
standard by which the success of schools was judged,' he
said.
'A clearer focus on those who have serious difficulty with reading
would have made sense.' The opposition Conservatives said the
government should have concentrated on tried and tested teaching
methods. -- Reuters