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Where the money ought to go
performing below the levels needed for satisfactory progress in secondary school.48 The government has recognised this to a degree but the money earmarked in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) is inadequate to the task. Moreover, much of the individual help offered will be for periods too short to make a difference, and so risks being wasted. The CSR provides funding for reading assistance (Every Child a Reader, involving 30,000 children a year, age 5 and 6) and for “ten hours of one-to-one” tuition for 300,000 pupils in English and Maths. The numbers served are inadequate;49 moreover the 10 hours entitlement risks being an expensive waste of money, because it will not provide enough support for children to catch up with their classmates, let alone maintain that position. Reading Recovery, an extremely well evaluated and established scheme, lifts 79 per cent of the children who receive it out of literacy failure. The Reading Recovery programme’s research and evaluations also show 37 hours per primary-age child to be the average required for permanent improvement, and the average cost per child to be £2389 (current prices.) If one added the direct costs of the proposals for 16 and 17 year olds’ compulsory participation, as estimated by the Government, to the money already set aside for extra tuition, the costs of full Reading Recovery participation for the poorest readers could be covered. English for non-native speakers (ESOL) is another area where additional funding is badly needed, and would have substantial and immediate positive outcomes. Large numbers of people who are resident in the UK do not speak, read or write English at levels which make it possible for them to use their skills and abilities fully in the labour market, or help their children to fulfil their potential.50 However, funding for these classes, for which there is enormous demand, has been badly hit by the government’s current priorities. Increasing proportions of post-compulsory funding are channelled towards meeting “Level
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48. Provisional figures for 2007 show that numbers of year 6 pupils performing at below level 4 in Key Stage 2 SATs included 120,000 boys and 72,000 girls below that standard for writing, 65,000 boys and 68,000 below in maths, and 56,000 boys and 36,000 girls below in reading. Some of these were ‘assessed by teacher assessment only’ and so did not register a level. There will be comparable numbers who are well behind in years 4 and 5. A large number - between 6 and 7 per cent or about 40,000 children a year - also leave primary school with extremely poor skills, below level 3, which is the average for a 7 or 8 year old. This figure has remained largely unchanged for the last decade 49. See KPMG Foundation The Long-term Costs of Literacy 2007. The report estimates that the returns on Reading Recovery expenditures would average between 14.8 per cent and 17.6 per cent. It also argues that, at present, every child with acute literacy difficulties will on average, by the age of 37, have cost the public purse between £44,797 and £53,098 50. Carr-Hill, A., Passingham, S. and Wolf A. Lost Opportunities The Language Skills of Linguistic Minorities in England and Wales. Basic Skills Agency, 1996.