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Reading Recovery Programme

The hon. Lady has hit on a serious and important point. All too often we are considering remedies—putting things right instead of getting them right in the first place, and instead of setting up a continual strategy to ensure that children achieve. Wherever we look in social policy we can perceive what is happening: for example, in relation to 16 to 18-year-olds in my constituency who are not in employment, education or training one might ask why—where is it going wrong? Then the analysis can be regressed back to secondary school and the skills taught there: one can ask why one in seven boys in my constituency could not read the first lesson at school. Then one can ask about primary level, the giving of support and, as I have mentioned, the teaching of social behaviour at that level; and then one can read the Ofsted reports of every primary school in my constituency—which, I admit, is at one end of the spectrum—highlighting the problem of youngsters not being ready for school. Regressing further, one comes to the point at which a child is born, and the level of parenting skills and interaction. I have seen an incredibly revealing slide from research work done by Worldwide Alternatives to Violence, which has been used in the social exclusion unit booklet, showing the brain of a three-year-old child who is loved, nurtured and spoken to, and who has all that a young child needs, alongside the brain of a neglected child who has no interaction, is poorly nourished and does not receive the stimulus that one would expect. There is a marked difference in size between the two brains of those youngsters, aged three. To see that given physical expression was a shock and a sobering experience, even for someone who, like me, feels that they know a little about the subject. There are youngsters who are physically unable to do what everyone else takes for granted. The intervention by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) is, therefore, absolutely right. We need to complete a circle back to what we do to improve parenting skills, what we do prenatally and what we do before the people concerned decide—if a choice is indeed made—to have a child. The process should loop round to the parenting skills and the social and family skills that we are now beginning to teach in secondary school, so that people make the right choices and do not experience teenage pregnancy or take up the unhealthy lifestyles that so many youngsters engage in. If we complete that virtuous circle, we can start to tackle some of those problems, rather than spend billions of pounds on the consequences of neglect and the failure to intervene at the right time. The case is put particularly eloquently by a quote in the Select Committee on Education and Skills 2005 report, ““Teaching Children to Read””, where it says:"““Too many children fail to reach adequate levels of literacy: Whatever the impact of recent developments in the teaching of literacy, there has been little improvement at the lower end of the achievement spectrum””," on which I have tried to focus today. It goes on:"““The education system in England is still failing to meet the needs of a significant proportion of children who leave school with inadequate literacy for the demands of the modern world…The implementation of Reading Recovery is under serious threat in England. In the past three years, schools in England have reported increasing difficulty in their ability to fund the programme for their least able children and six longstanding LEAs have ceased their implementation, with three more currently at risk. Lack of funding has been the principal reason given for closures.””" The Select Committee goes on to say:"““If the Government wishes to make a real difference to the literacy rates among primary school children, it must ensure that suitable programmes are available to all those children who require intensive support, and that they are delivered by highly qualified professionals.””" That sums up my argument. On one level, I would like to see a world in which all parents were helped to be skilled enough to ensure that every child arrived at school school-ready and prepared to take the journey of learning to read. Parents need that help. In my constituency, 58 per cent. of children are born out of wedlock. I make no moral judgment about that, but it is a structural fact that needs to be addressed in a constituency such as mine. Parents absolutely need that early intervention so that they can give their children the future that they want to give them just as much as any parent in the Chamber wants to give their children a good future. Until children are arriving at school school-ready, I would like reading recovery to be available to all children, not just in my constituency but everywhere in the UK where difficulties with literacy needlessly waste their potential. I make an offer: as chair of the local strategic partnership, One Nottingham, I am prepared to help to fund such an initiative in my city if and when the local education authority and the children and young people’s partnership there feel that that is appropriate and are ready to go ahead with it. I end with a quote from someone who is learning to read and doing pretty well—my daughter Grace. This morning, while I was preparing for this speech and Grace was sitting reading a book, I said to her, ““Grace, I’ve got this speech in the House of Commons; I don’t know really know how to finish it appropriately, because it is pretty serious. What do you think?”” She put down the Lemony Snicket book that she was reading and looked at me. I said, ““Tell me, Grace, why is reading important?”” and she replied, ““You don’t get much out of life if you don’t read.”” I ask the Minister to give every child that opportunity.