Literacy news
Over a third of children leave state primary schools in London with reading difficulties, says new report
21 Jul 2010
A new report released this week by the Centre for Policy Studies states that London is suffering from an 'epidemic of illiteracy'.
In a foreword to the study, London mayor Boris Johnson writes:
"It is perhaps the single most shattering indictment of our educational system that in London – the motor of the UK economy – there are a million adults who cannot read. We are talking about an epidemic of illiteracy, and a serious cause of economic underperformance."
The report goes on to state that primary school teachers are breeding illiteracy among children by letting them speak "street" in the classroom. Misplaced fear of interfering with self-expression has led to a damaging failure to correct pupils who communicate in an argot mixing linguistic influences from Cockney to Indian, according to the report. The author, Miriam Gross, said schools were not repeating phonics "over and over again" but allowing a child-led approach to hold sway. Gross writes:
"Only later, when they get to secondary school, do these pupils discover that 'street' is not acceptable in their written work. Understandably, they find this both confusing and discouraging."
The report, which examines why one-third of children have difficulties with reading when they leave London's primary schools at the age of 11, also argues that white working-class parents "often seem to be indifferent to their children's education".
The report, titled So Why Can't They Read?, insists that traditional, structured methods such as synthetic phonics – in which children learn to "decode" words by combining individual letters and sounds – are the most effective, and attacks teachers for refusing to adopt them despite government attempts to encourage their use.
Gross says child illiteracy is made worse because many teachers have a weak grasp of spelling and syntax, and argues that the problem cannot be blamed on the large number of immigrant pupils in city schools. She writes:
"There is in fact a great deal of evidence to show that it is white working-class children who have the most intractable reading difficulties."
You can read the full report here
Read more at:
The Guardian
The Daily Telegraph
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