Raising Literacy Standards: The True Story

Abstract

As the Literacy Hour becomes compulsory in primary schools across Britain it is important to consider its impact on the primary teaching profession and the factual basis on which its aims and structures are based. This article claims that the National Literacy Strategy is a deskilling initiative which itself is based on unsubstantiated claims that its proposals are more effective than previous methods. It enshrines a mythology that teachers do not teach literacy effectively and need to be retrained to do so. The article examines the evidence for this myth and finds there are no research findings of any validity whatsoever to support it. The article goes on to point to the real and inescapable correlation between literacy attainment and social and economic status, a finding which shows up in several different pieces of valid research. Working on the supposition that the Labour Government does genuinely care about the long tail of failure provided by the 20 per cent or so of children who come from the poorest socio-economic groups, the article goes on to discuss a reconceptualisation of this problem. Building on the work of social anthropologists, particularly that of Brian Street, it suggests the direction in which valid research-based policy and pedagogy should take to address it.