Oral question asked in the House of Commons, by David Evennett (Conservative). It was answered by Gillian Keegan (Conservative) on Monday, 29 April 2024 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Reading Standards

Question: What steps her Department has taken to improve standards of reading in schools.

Answer: Since 2010, we have completely transformed how we teach reading in England, expanding the evidence-based methods of phonics across all of our schools. In the 2011-12 phonics screening checks, only 58% of our children met the expected standard of reading. Thanks to those reforms and the hard work of our brilliant teachers, not only is that number now 79%, but our primary schoolchildren have been ranked fourth best readers in the world. We are sticking to our plan, delivering higher reading standards across our schools.

Secondary information