READING RIGHT The Tory leader this week declares that in power, his party will focus on having every child reading by six years of age, providing they re not acute Special Needs. Either Smooth Dave knows this is a stupid and cruel plan, in which case he makes the Wicked Witch of the West look like Mary Poppins, or he doesn t know this is a stupid and cruel plan, in which case he shouldn t be let ride a bicycle, let alone lead a political party.
In November 2007, David Cameron, leader of the Tory party, published a policy proposal to introduce compulsory reading tests for six year olds. In an article for the Belfast Telegraph, Jude Collins reacted to Cameron s proposal. Since your eye is presently running along the words of this sentence it s a safe bet you can read. So tell me this: how did you manage to master this tremendously complex activity? Think about it. Somebody has a series of thoughts and s/he makes a series of squiggles on a page. A day, a week, ten years, a hundred years later, somebody else comes along, unfreezes the squiggles, releases the thoughts embedded in them, and lets them flow into his/her brain and adds them to his/her own. Amazing. Miraculous. Totally brilliant. But you d never guess it, if you listen to David Cameron.
How is Smooth Dave s latest vote-seeking wheeze stupid and cruel, you ask? Let me count the ways. 1. People s mental abilities develop at different rates. It s like physical growth. At six, some are taller than others, some broader, some fatter, some stronger, some wait until they re eight or ten or fourteen before putting on a growth spurt. So to say you ll have all six-year-olds reading by six is like saying you ll have everyone five feet tall by ten. Some master reading early, some master it late. Zenna Atkins, the chair of the schools inspection authority Ofsted, which operates in England, couldn t read the back of a cornflakes packet until she was twelve. 2. The more tests you put children through, the more you block genuine learning. We re familiar here with the way the Eleven Plus dominates the curriculum from the beginning of Year 6 until half-way through Year 7. Teachers, keen to get good results for their school, drill and drill and drill again. No learning happens. Dave s reading wheeze would move the malaise of the Eleven Plus back 18