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Reading Recovery Programme

I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing this debate and the ecumenical way in which he spoke—the seating arrangements this morning are also ecumenical. He mentioned deprivation and the effect that low literacy and numeracy standards can have on trapping people in the deprived circumstances they may have had since birth. He also mentioned the low literacy and numeracy standards of people in prison, as did the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) when she spoke about young offenders. There is a large prison in my constituency and we know about the measurable levels of literacy and numeracy, but when one talks to prisoners their low articulation skills are striking and follow from low education skills. That partly explains why they find themselves in those dreadful circumstances. We know from the Government’s research and the Department’s report in 2005 that the gap in educational attainment between key stage 2 for children aged 11 who have free school meals and those in families that are not eligible for that support can be up to 2.9 terms—in anyone else’s language that means a year’s loss of teaching support. That feeds through into a wider gap at GCSE level. In higher education—I usually speak on that for my party—the participation rate for those from working class families is around 15 per cent., whereas for those from professional families and whose parents have been to university it is 80 per cent. There is a yawning gap in participation rates in higher education. That gap grows wider from the age of seven and that is probably the age at which the gap at 18 is determined. The hon. Member for Nottingham, North mentioned the number of words that children from different families might hear at a young age. I think he said—he will correct me if I am wrong—that children from a professional family background might hear 50 million words, but those from a working class background might hear 12 million words. Early intervention will pay a great dividend.