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07Nov2011
Can we address poverty by focusing on literacy? Frank Field MP thinks so.

Posted by Emily McCoy

To not consider literacy in planning to combat child poverty is to miss a trick.

Without parents supporting their child’s early language development inter-generational cycles of exclusion will only continue. Without literacy skills, poorer children are unable to close the gap in educational outcomes between them and their more well-off peers. Without literacy skills, access to training and employment is limited and family incomes falter. Perhaps most crucially, without literacy skills people feel disempowered and excluded from society, reducing expectations of a better life.

I urge all local authorities to make literacy a priority in their approaches to address child poverty and to use the resources provided by the National Literacy Trust to help them in this mission.

The Rt Hon. Frank Field MP

The same day Frank Field MP opened our national conference on literacy and child poverty (11^th October) the Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that child poverty was only going to get worse. Their report concluded that falling incomes will create the biggest drop for middle-income families since the 1970s, with the next two years being "dominated by a large decline" in incomes, pushing 600,000 more children into poverty. If their forecasts hold true then, by 2013 there will be 3.1 million children in poverty in the UK.

The need to look at effective ways of addressing child poverty is only increasing.

Our conference looked into the role of low literacy in poverty – both as a necessary building block for employment and as a lever to break inter-generational cycles of disadvantage and underachievement. We heard from local authorities tackling this issue, not through expensive interventions, but by working innovatively with multi-agency partners and communities to make sure that literacy support is easy-to-reach. 98% of delegates said they would take action locally as a result of the conference – there was a real buzz, with attendees feeling that low literacy should simply not be allowed to reduce life chances in this country.

If there is to be no national measure on life chances (as per the recommendation from the Independent Review into Child Poverty and Life Chances) then the onus is ever more on local authorities and their partners to learn from each other what is effective practice.

Our conference shared how some local areas are striving to increase life chances by tackling inter-generational low literacy and poor home learning environments.

Government, locally and nationally, seems to accept that poverty is enabled, extended and embedded through low achievement, low aspiration and low opportunity across generations. Literacy has a vital role to play in addressing all three.

So, the question remains how can poverty be tackled without an explicit focus on literacy?

Read our research on literacy and poverty “Literacy: a route to addressing poverty?”.

We want to work with local authorities to address low literacy as part of their work to combat poverty. Please contact us for more information. Email emily.mccoy@literacytrust.org.uk.