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Children, Schools and Families

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very important point. Children who are engaged in education from the earliest years, which means above all else being able to read effectively, are much less likely to engage in disruptive behaviour thereafter or to cause problems of other kinds in the education system. She was therefore completely right. The noble Baroness asked what we are doing to implement the Rose review. We are providing a great deal of high-quality resource to schools on the teaching practices in respect of reading which come out of the Rose report. We have just issued to schools new teaching materials, handbooks and CD-ROMs, which give good supporting guidance to them on how to implement Rose. The materials have been extremely well received by schools and, although we do not formally direct them, virtually all of them will implement Rose. The materials that we have put out have had a very positive response from teachers.