Policy Exchange's report, ‘Rising Marks, Falling Standards', reveals the shocking truth about school standards. In 2008, a decade after the infamous "education, education, education" commitment from Tony Blair, 56% of boys and 66% of girls left primary school last year unable to read, write and count to the minimum standard.
The Government has spent over £2 billion on its flagship national literacy and numeracy strategies, introduced at the end of the 1990s. Yet our analysis shows that the degree of improvement in literacy and numeracy was considerably faster in the five years before the strategies were introduced. Since the launch of these strategies the rate of improvement has been slowing down dramatically. SAT results at the end of primary school are now improving at an average of less than 1% a year and results for high-achieving pupils are falling year on year in all three core subjects. All this comes against a backdrop of easier tests, a narrowing curriculum, falling grade boundaries and widespread ‘teaching to the test'.
Bearing this in mind, Sir Jim Rose's revamp of the curriculum is a crushing disappointment. Nothing is more important for the future success of a child than their ability to read, write and count, and nothing should be given greater priority. Combining the 14 individual subjects into six ‘learning areas' is a mere distraction. So too the focus of the new curriculum on getting pupils to use more technology such as podcasts, Google Earth and Wikipedia - even when they are unable to read, write and count properly. It is a cruel irony that the new curriculum will also make at least one (if not two) foreign language compulsory for all pupils aged 7 to 11, regardless of whether they have mastered their own language.
The Rose review promises to ‘refresh' the literacy and numeracy frameworks, but gives no detail about what this means. If the Government is simply offering more centrally imposed programmes that stifle innovation, with hundreds of millions continuing to be spent on local authority advisers to support them, the chance of meaningful change seems slim. Why not let teachers decide how best to teach literacy and numeracy by phasing out the national strategies and giving schools extra money to purchase their preferred teaching materials. The belief that every school in the country must teach literacy and numeracy in exactly the same way is woefully misguided. Teachers, not ministers, are the people who can put our pupils back on track.
