UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 121-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE

 

 

Teaching Children to Read

 

 

Wednesday 8 December 2004

MR STEPHEN TWIGG MP, MR ANDREW McCULLY and DR KEVAN COLLINS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 133 - 260

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Education and Skills Committee

on Wednesday 8 December 2004

Members present

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair

Valerie Davey

Jeff Ennis

Mr Nick Gibb

Paul Holmes

Helen Jones

Mr Kerry Pollard

Jonathan Shaw

Mr Andrew Turner

________________

Witnesses: Mr Stephen Twigg, a Member of the House, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools; Mr Andrew McCully, Director of School Standards Group, and Dr Kevan Collins, National Director, Primary National Strategy, Department for Education and Skills, examined.

Q133 Chairman: Can I welcome Stephen Twigg, the Minister, and his two members of the Department, Kevan Collins and Andrew McCully, to our deliberations. We have slightly changed the order, about which I have informed Stephen Twigg, and we are going to one or two of the members who really wanted to ask questions about the recent publication of the OECD PISA study. Of course, we do not figure in the tables. Minister, why do we not?

Mr Twigg: Because we did not meet the technical requirements, which is obviously hugely disappointing.

Q134 Chairman: But the United States had less of a critical mass than we did in terms of figures, and they lobbied apparently to be included and were included?

Mr Twigg: My understanding is that we simply did not fulfil those technical requirements. We clearly benefit from having the opportunity to be compared with other countries. The OECD has made it clear that the amount of information that has been provided from schools in this country is simply insufficient for us to merit proper inclusion within the comparisons.

Q135 Chairman: So were the comments in the Telegraph extrapolating figures fair comment?

Mr Twigg: We do not accept that is fair comment because we do not believe there is sufficient information available for those sorts of comparisons to be made in the way the Telegraph has done.

Q136 Mr Turner: Do you accept that there are both PISA rankings and TIMS rankings? Would you like to tell us what you think are the differences between those two, and which is the more appropriate?

Mr Twigg: I am not sufficiently sighted of the different bases of the two to give a fair answer to that, to be honest. I think it would be much better if I take some advice and come back to the Committee on that.

Mr Turner: Thank you.

Q137 Mr Gibb: Did any officials in the DfES talk to officials in the ONS about this, or try to persuade the ONS, or put pressure on the ONS not to submit these figures?

Mr Twigg: There were certainly discussions between the Department and the ONS. I am not aware of any efforts to persuade them in one direction or another.

Q138 Mr Gibb: Could you submit a list of discussions or meetings by DfES officials with the ONS?

Mr Twigg: I think the sensible thing for me to do is take that back and discuss it with David Miliband, who does lead on these matters, and respond to the Committee.

Q139 Mr Gibb: Why do you think there is such a low participation rate by English schools compared with most of the European countries that participate?

Mr Twigg: I do not understand it; it does not fit with some of our previous experience of other studies, for example, studies in primary that we may well have the opportunity to talk about later on, and certainly I would want us to learn some lessons from what has happened this time so when PISA has its 2006 piece of work we are in there and we need to see what role positively and proactively the Department can play in ensuring that schools are participating next time.

Q140 Chairman: Minister, is anyone in the ONS statistical part of our government going to be reprimanded or sacked? Is there going to be an inquiry why we did not meet these specifications?

Mr Twigg: I am not aware of there being any suggestion or culpability on the part of statisticians working in the Department.

Q141 Chairman: No. Outside the Department.

Mr Twigg: In ONS?

Q142 Chairman: Yes.

Mr Twigg: Again, I think the fair response to that is for me to take that back and talk to David Miliband ‑‑

Q143 Chairman: Maybe, but there are a lot of people out there who will say "This is a fix". The government has been saying "Look, how well we did in PISA, look how well we did in PISA, look how well we are doing in these international comparisons, and we are all looking forward to the PISA study". How long ago did you know that we would not be included in the PISA study this time?

Mr Twigg: I do not know the answer to that; I would have to find out. I do not lead on this particular area within the schools.

Q144 Chairman: Can you reassure the Committee this is not a fix?

Mr Twigg: I can absolutely give that reassurance and my understanding is the basis is simply the question that was asked before about schools not submitting and not participating this time, which is clearly very disappointing, and that is why there are lessons we do need to learn for the next time and for future such studies.

Q145 Paul Holmes: The Minister said that the British figures, the sample, was too small so it was not included but it is published in the annexe to the PISA report so the Telegraph has looked at some of those figures and published their interpretation that shows Britain dropping its position in literacy, maths and science I think as well. The Minister said there is not enough evidence there to justify that interpretation but the USA, which had less statistical evidence, was included in the official figures. Are you saying, therefore, that any interpretation of the USA's position is using less information and should not be there?

Mr Twigg: I do not know the answer in terms of the United States. I know the OECD has made it very clear that there is insufficient information from the United Kingdom to make the sorts of comparisons the Telegraph is making.

Q146 Paul Holmes: But America is in the official table with less information than the British, so surely America's cannot be valid?

Mr Twigg: I would have to ask the OECD that, and they have made it very clear to us that there is insufficient information available from the United Kingdom. I am not sighted of the detail of the United States' evidence to know whether there is some mechanism they have used to remove the sort of bias the OECD tells us is there within the figures for the United Kingdom.

Q147 Paul Holmes: The British sample statistically was only a few per cent I believe below the levels where it should have officially been included, so how can that invalidate the entire set of data?

Mr Twigg: The OECD say it is outside the parameters of what would be a valid set of data upon which we could reach a judgment. It is not us saying this; it is the OECD saying it.

Q148 Paul Holmes: According to the Telegraph's interpretation of that quite large statistical sample of information, it showed Britain dropping in terms of literacy, yet all the Government's literacy tests and standards each year show us improving. How would you reconcile the two if we were dropping nationally, and yet internally all our tests are showing us improving?

Mr Twigg: Clearly we will have to look at what is being said and what the evidence is. We do not believe there is sufficient evidence to make a robust comparison in PISA between ourselves and other countries; that is what OECD has told us. But if there is evidence that points in a particular direction of course it is important that we will consider that evidence as we take forward our strategies. Of course, we have to do that.

Q149 Chairman: Minister, we would like to now move on to the main business that you are anticipating. Do you want to open up, or go straight to the questions?

Mr Twigg: I am happy to go straight to questions.

Q150 Chairman: Right. We are particularly interested in how we teach children to read. Increasingly as we start to discuss this and take evidence I am reminded in a sense, if we are going to do this on an evidence basis, that it is important to know what the Department is doing in terms of assessing what are the best ways to teach children to read and how far there are people within the Department or commissioned in university departments or elsewhere looking at this, because it does also go with another problem that we are not looking specifically at of how we teach children about mathematics and how we get into maths and science as well. So the right way of approaching those subjects at the earliest age is very important to get the research right. What are we doing in the Department in terms of understanding what really works?

Mr Twigg: It is absolutely critical that all of this is based on evidence and if we look at the history of the National Literacy Strategy, it goes back to the OFSTED report in 1996 looking at 45 inner London primary schools, and then a robust look at the available research and literature at that time, which formed the foundation for the development of the National Literacy Strategy. Once the strategy was in place, we have then sought at every stage of the strategy to keep on top of the research to ensure that we are engaging with academic evidence both from people in this country and from people in other parts of the world, and that is a continuous process. Dr Kevan Collins who heads up the Primary National Strategy is very much leading on that as an educationalist engaging within the Department but also, perhaps more importantly, engaging with people out there in both practice but also in the field of academic research both in this country and elsewhere in the world.

Q151 Chairman: So can Dr Collins tell us what research we have carried out and what we are continuing to carry out?

Dr Collins: There are two kinds that we draw on. We draw on a body of historical research, and as the literacy strategy and the numeracy strategy were drawn together they were well‑founded on the core research. I would say that in terms of the literacy strategy, we were very fortunate it was a seminal piece of research done in the late 90s in the United States through Marilyn Jaeger Adams which basically did a full review of all literacy research and informed our work as well as the key research in England drawing on the work in Australia, New Zealand and this country. As well as that historical body of research, which we draw on deeply, we also in an on‑going way continually reflect on learning as it occurs, and a key area of that has been the developing research around phonics, which has been a piece of literacy learning, a core element, which we have continually updated and developed and, as we move through our support for schools, we keep drawing on it and evolving and developing our resources, our materials and support based on the research. So it draws on a historical base and continues to respond to evolving research that is happening every day.

Q152 Chairman: But is there something coming out of this research that suggests we are approaching the Early Years in terms of teaching people both reading and mathematics and getting them into the subjects in the very early times, and that we have been doing something wrong historically? Have we had a worse approach that some of our neighbours in Europe?

Dr Collins: The evidence does not point that way. The evidence of progress in our young children in their reading and mathematics is it is good and we are moving in the right direction, with almost 100,000 more children leaving our primary schools now than in 1997 achieving the level that we expect and hope for them.

Q153 Chairman: But if we compare ourselves with some of the countries in South East Asia, for example, I was at the award ceremony of AQA on Monday and the best student in the country is someone originally from Asia, but a scientist mathematician. Is it not true that some parts of the world are better than us at teaching literacy and some are better at teaching maths? What are we doing wrong that they are doing right?

Dr Collins: I do not think we are doing anything wrong. I think we have things to learn, and if you take a good example of mathematics which would be Korea, the structure of a mathematics lesson in Korea is something we have used quite strongly in forming the daily mathematics lesson, but I do not think the issue is identifying one small aspect of learning and saying "How can we be the best in the world in that"; we are trying to be good and excellent at everything but also attend to a broader and holistic aim in terms of the child's fully rounded learning, and when you look at the learning in the round we stand tall and should be proud of what we are achieving, because in the round we are doing well. In reading we emerge, as you know, in the recent Perl study of ten year olds - not PISA 15 year olds - primary school, third in the world, highest in the English speaking country. In mathematics we are the fastest improving country in the world, but we have to look in the round rather than at one country that focuses very heavily on one aspect of learning but not so well in other areas.

Q154 Mr Gibb: Minister, you went to Cuckoo Hall School I understand recently?

Mr Twigg: Yes.

Q155 Mr Gibb: They have some phenomenal results as a result of adopting a new programme. My understanding is it went from 58 per cent achieving two 'B' and above to 85 per cent achieving two 'B' and above in one year. What were your perceptions of that visit?

Mr Twigg: I was very impressed with the school, which is the London borough of Enfield, not in my constituency, and my sense is it is a school with very effective leadership. Patricia Sowter is a very able head teacher and she has made a difference, and she has put a focus on literacy and within the literacy programme a focus on phonics that has had a very positive effect in that school.

Q156 Mr Gibb: What did she think of the programme she was using?

Mr Twigg: She is an enthusiast for it.

Q157 Mr Gibb: Very good. Can I ask Dr Collins what you think the NLS has achieved - and I am a great fan of the NLS so this is a soft ball question!

Dr Collins: I think there are three things from my experience as a teacher and a head teacher and working in primary schools over 20 odd years or so in this country. We have given literacy a place. Rather than have it scattered across the day in primary school teaching it has a dedicated time to be taught and it is focused. We have seen expectations in teachers' planning and teaching improve and that has led to improved standards in children. We have seen standards improve right across the piece; there has been no glass ceiling. One of the great success stories is that a third of our children are leaving our primary schools achieving level five, way above what we expect. We have seen significant improvements, as I said 100,000 children achieving level 4, and we have seen standards improving at Key Stage 1, so we have seen expectations rise and teaching change, and I think the other thing which have seen is a new kind of energy and vigour and enjoyment from children in literacy itself, and we see that in the way in which they engage in the tasks.

Q158 Mr Gibb: You must have spoken to a lot of teachers and been to a lot of schools. Do you think there is anything you have learned from it that you would do differently now, perhaps?

Dr Collins: Yes. The exciting moment we are in now is where people have great ownership of the strategy and are beginning to adapt and evolve it to make it work for themselves. The phonics example you raise is a good one because our view is that schools must have a structured phonics programme. The structured phonics programme they choose is up to them; there are a number to choose them from. There is a national programme there on the shelf and freely available, but some schools go down other routes and I think I would have liked to have had earlier slightly more adaptability for schools to take ownership in the way they wanted to.

Q159 Mr Gibb: What percentage children end up going on the wave two NLS programme or the wave three intensive support programme?

Dr Collins: The proportion that go on and the proportion that should go on are slightly different. In terms of wave three, and they are the children who I would describe, if you want, by the end of primary school below level three, which is now a great concern of course, we are talking about eight or nine per cent of children at those sorts of levels. In terms of wave two, which is where we give children a second chance to learn who seem to be slipping off the pace, we see fantastic success. We have those programmes in literacy in years one, three and five and the most recent one is the year five FLS programme, and in that programme the independent study from Leeds University and our own analysis results show that a significant majority of those children made up the gap and went on to achieve level four. So in wave two we generally talk about maybe 15, 20 per cent of children possibly needing some kind of wave two provision which is comparable to the general range of international studies when you are looking at children who might need a second chance, and the wave three for us is unfortunately holding and a pretty hard nut to crack round about the eight and nine per cent, and we are focusing on driving that down.

Mr Gibb: That is what I would like to focus on too because that is the figure stopping us going from 85 to 100 per cent. Is there anything that you have learned where you could improve wave one, the basic standard programme that would mean we would not have to have 15 or 20 per cent going on to wave two, which is a remedial catch‑up programme, or eight or nine per cent going on to wave three which is a very serious catch‑up programme four years down the line. How can we improve wave one to prevent this proportion of children needing catch‑up and remedial work?

Chairman: What percentage come through?

Q160 Mr Gibb: Eight or nine per cent. This is the hard core of the problem - why we are not going from 85 up to 100 per cent. If we can tackle this we can solve a lot of Britain's problems. What could we do to wave one to get that figure down? Do you feel there is anything we can do?

Dr Collins: We define that as, if you like, quality first teaching and the imperative is to ensure that every child gets the best possible start. For me the priorities are early intervention, so we are working very closely with our colleagues in the Foundation stage and Early Years, so our recent phonics publication called Playing with Sounds is driving the phonics teaching into the Early Years, done on a games‑based approach where it is fast and fun but that is really important. Also, working very assertively with parents in a sense in terms of giving them more support on how they can support their children's reading and we work with Sure Start, but it is all about the early intervention and working with the children and catching them as early as possible.

Q161 Chairman: Andrew, are you the lead person in the National Schools Standard Team?

Mr McCully: Indeed. Kevan leads the team which is outside the Department in terms of structure, so I bring Kevan's experience into the Department and combine that with a range of other approaches to the school improvement, and it is the school improvement angle where I wanted to supplement Kevan's points. Mr Gibb, you asked the question what would he have done differently or more quickly, and I think the other key aspect of our developments over the last year or so is to bring the National Literacy Strategy together with the national numeracy strategy into a much more integrated approach to improving standards in primary schools, and one of the key areas for development and further progress, because we are very clear we need to make further progress, is looking at the effective leadership of the overall curriculum and standards within schools and increasing focus on interventions and those schools where standards could and should be better. I highlight two areas which are crucial to the management of the waves that you have just been talking about. First of all, our leadership programme in primary schools, where we now have around about ten per cent of the most effective primary leaders in the country working with those schools who are underperforming or who have room to improve their literacy and numeracy standards. We are also developing this year a more intensive programme of support, where the real focus is on the basics - the basic systems and the basic structures for the improvement of literacy and numeracy in those schools - and I think with those two very significant whole school developments we add to the very structured teaching and learning strategies which Kevan has just been talking about.

Q162 Mr Gibb: To what extent is phonics embedded in the text used by children in the first few years in primary school?

Dr Collins: Phonics, of course, is embedded in all texts but what we do not do in terms of the reading books that children enjoy is control them by phonic knowledge. Where you might be going, and correct me if I am wrong, is that there are reading approaches which focus on the phonic knowledge in terms of the text the children read and you just provide text that sometimes may not even make sense as long as you are giving the right phonic practice to the children. That is not our approach. The approach we have is we teach phonics explicitly and directly away from text. We teach phonic knowledge, and phonic skills of blending, segmenting and recognition, but then we encourage children to apply that phonic knowledge to real text. That text is appropriately age-related.

Q163 Mr Gibb: But even though some of the words or longer words in those texts will be beyond their phonics knowledge?

Dr Collins: Yes.

Q164 Mr Gibb: So how are they meant to get those words?

Dr Collins: They have to develop two sets of skills, phonic skills which allow you to decode words where there is a phonic regularity, but the problem in English because of its orthography is some of the high frequency words, let us take "the", are quite complex phonic bits of work, so we have to teach two things ‑ phonic knowledge firstly, but, secondly, word recognition, and there are some words we just teach as sight words.

Q165 Mr Gibb: But it goes beyond "the". There are a huge number of words that go beyond their phonic knowledge. In your judgment, you think that is not damaging the children's learning ability in reading?

Dr Collins: Absolutely not because to read well in English at all levels you need two things ‑ you need absolute phonic knowledge, that is your first and foremost certainty, but you also need the ability to problem solve words that are not regular and that certainly do not conform to the phonic range.

Q166 Mr Gibb: Lastly, it was very good to see you at the seminar, and hopefully in January we can thrash this out a bit more, but what do you think of Morag Stuart's paper on this? She is quite critical of this double‑edged approach, the four‑pronged ‑‑

Dr Collins: The Searchlights model.

Q167 Mr Gibb: Yes. What do you think of her paper which analysed the DfES paper in quite a lot of detail?

Dr Collins: I am a great fan of Morag and I think she has done tremendous work. The point is, though, that teachers do work hard to identify texts that are within the reach of children's kind of phonic knowledge. There is an attempt to do that, but what I am saying is it is impossible, or certainly not our approach, to try and completely eliminate all words that are not within the phonic range.

Mr Twigg: Briefly, we had a seminar last year at which Kevan was present and Morag as well in which we reviewed all of this, and there is clearly a range of views and, indeed, we can be criticised in the direction that Nick has set out but also from the other direction as well, and the sense - not from me but that expert seminar - was that we basically got it about right in terms of the balance.

Chairman: A very senior educationalist, when he heard that we were looking at this area, said "That area is a swamp with sharks in it"!

Q168 Helen Jones: Dr Collins, you mentioned the need for work in the Early Years and when we visited Finland we found that children in Finnish schools learn to read in a few months, and there are two reasons for that. One is that Finnish is a phonetic language, but also they get much more preparation in pre school to make them ready to read. Are you satisfied with the quality of preparation that we have in the Early Years in terms of getting children ready to read, and are you concerned that in some areas we may be trying to teach children to read text far too early rather than getting them reading ready? Have you any evidence for that?

Dr Collins: If I could add one more piece to the finished jigsaw, I have had the privilege of visiting schools in Finland as well, and the other dimension is the enormous support in the home and socially for language, and especially for literacy.

Q169 Helen Jones: Absolutely.

Dr Collins: The focus in Early Years has been one of the amazing stories of the last ten years in this country. The strength of the Foundation stage curriculum, the work in our Reception, our Nursery, and our Early Years settings is really beginning to come through. What we now have is a much more consistent approach. We are focusing in my team on quality, ensuring that the provision now is consistently higher, and what I mean by that is that children are engaged in rich oral language experiences in Early Years.

Q170 Helen Jones: Nursery rhymes.

Dr Collins: Yes, which are really important for syntactic knowledge ‑‑

Q171 Helen Jones: I am trying to get us back to real English!

Dr Collins: ‑‑ but the other dimension of that is it has to be meaningful as well. I was in Everton children's centre last week where they are engaged in environmental learning and although it is environmental learning one of the core outcomes is oral language for those children, and we see that as key in preparing children for literacy. Absolutely essential learning. I could not agree with you more.

Q172 Helen Jones: We have received some evidence that, where we have this problem of underachievement, it is due to the fact that children have poor language and listening skills to start with. Now, given the fact that we have difficulty in recruiting staff in the Early Years and those staff are often very poorly paid, do you have any evidence that it would help improve our reading skills if we paid more attention to the qualifications and pay of staff in Early Years settings before children even start formal school?

Mr Twigg: That is part of what we need to do, as we take forward the whole area of children's services and Early Years. That is an element of what needs to be done anyway in terms of the status and recruitment and retention of those staff, so we are providing a genuinely quality early start for children in those settings. There is work being undertaken, obviously led by Margaret Hodge, on that.

Mr McCully: You asked about the evidence. The document that was published on the government's child care strategy quoted the most recent evidence from the EPPI work which confirmed that the crucial element about improving standards was the quality of the early learning experience, not necessarily the quantity but the quality, and that points certainly to your points about qualifications and the standards.

Q173 Helen Jones: We have seen some very good nursery provision but also some that makes us cringe - children tracing out letters of the alphabet before they are even properly equipped to hold their pencils properly. We all agree we have to get rid of that. But the other question I want to ask you, if I may, is you referred earlier to this question about phonics and texts, and English is a terribly difficult language, but can we clarify what we are trying to achieve here in reading, because it is not simply about teaching people the mechanics of reading - which is essential; it is also about getting them to enjoy books so they continue reading in later life. Have you any evidence to offer us on how the National Literacy Strategy is working? I can remember, for instance, you referred to Singapore where they are very good at teaching maths and science and they then said to us, "We need to know how to teach creativity"!

Mr Twigg: Yes. I went to Finland as well - I think everyone goes to Finland to look at this - but to Kevan's third point about the home I would add in a sense a fourth but related point about libraries. I went to visit public libraries in Finland and saw not just the commitment and investment there but the fact that they are so clearly widely used by people from all backgrounds, so I think that is an element that we need to build into the equation as well. They would have a love of reading as well as that technical ability to read, so there is a broader cultural aspect. I think in the Perl study, from memory not only did the ten year olds come out the third most able readers in the world, but also they came out as the most able to read full books. They were the most enthused by books, so it was not simply they had that technical ability: they also had the love of reading which I agree is critically important.

Dr Collins: Relating back to Mr Gibbs' earlier question about the strategy, one of the earlier elements of framework so important for me is there a set of entitlements included in there for children, that you have to or should enjoy poetry as part of your studies each year but you have a wide range, including non fiction for boys particularly and fiction as part of your reading experience. These are entitlements laid down in the framework so it is not only about a means to an end with everything driving towards one outcome; it is about ensuring that in the here and now your range of experience is full and broad, and that is a key element of the framework and one of the reasons that it is so important to document.

Mr McCully: Just to complete the picture, it has always been absolutely central to the approach that, alongside the National Literacy Strategy and the resources that Kevan leads on in schools, is the continuing campaign and encouragement for the enjoyment of reading. The National Reading Campaign which reached its height in 1999‑2000 was part of the introduction and development of the National Literacy Strategy. We continue that with a range of partners such as the National Literacy Trust which do fantastic work in terms of encouraging children and adults to read, and that remains absolutely central to our approach.

Q174 Helen Jones: On staff training, we are asking primary teachers to do an awful lot. We are asking them to be experts on the mechanics of teaching really, but also asking them to know a lot about literature, if we want children to enjoy poetry, novels and so on, and certainly I found when I was teaching English in secondary school that was a real difficulty. I used to say, "If I get another child who has only learnt to write haikus I shall scream"! What are we doing to improve the training of teachers, including those who were trained quite some time ago, and make them confident in both the teaching of reading and improving children's enjoyment of literature, and what else do you think we need to do that we are not doing now?

Mr Twigg: I think the most recent piece of work that OFSTED did looking at initial teacher training demonstrated that partly through the National Literacy Strategy and the work we have done with the teacher training agency and the various institutes of teacher education has improved the general, quality of teacher education with respect to English but clearly that is only at the initial stage, and what we then need to do is ensure that is built upon through the further stages of teaching with continuing professional development. As you will know, last year we published Excellence and Enjoyment, the programme for primary, that is very much about building upon the literacy and the numeracy strategies, but also looking at the broader curriculum in primary schools, and that itself was a product of a series of professional engagements, conferences with head teachers, engagement with teacher associations, talking with subject associations - and we will come later on to the outdoor learning issue - organisations like the Geographical Association and the Royal Geographical Society to really get that professional engagement so the support is there for work across the curriculum. So I think what we need to do is to be looking all the time at how we can engage professionally with teachers to improve their professional schools in English as a subject but also in literacy skills that can be enhanced through most, if not all, of the other subjects in the primary curriculum.

Q175 Chairman: But, Minister, early on in response to Helen's question you said that the important thing was quality, quality of teaching and instruction. When we did our Early Years inquiry on our visits what we noticed in Finland was that quality, yet we still have people in Early Years, who are paid a minimum wage, they themselves are not as articulate, many of them, as we would wish in terms of children learning from them, and here we have just had research presented to this Committee only last week that 75 per cent of Sure Start is not really making much difference. What on earth are you doing in the Department not to learn from that and switch to the programmes that do add value? What are you doing to improve the quality of things like Sure Start, because that is where it matters, is it not?

Mr Twigg: It is where it matters, and I think it is fair to say that the primary strategy, initially with the literacy and then the numeracy strategies is where we started off as a government so we are much further down the line with respect to the work we are doing in primary than we are with Sure Start and Early Years, which came a little bit later on. One of the things that Kevan and his colleagues have been doing is looking at how we can ensure we learn lessons across the phases, some of which will be the Early Years and Sure Start approach, the Children's Services approach, learning lessons from some of the success in the primary strategy as well as, as you rightly say, learning lessons from success within Sure Start itself, and that I know is an absolute priority for Margaret Hodge who leads on these matters to ensure that we do get that right. A lot of money has gone into Sure Start and will go into Children's Services. Of course we want that to be money that is properly spent.

Q176 Chairman: But are we already switching that money from the programmes that do not add much value to children's educational experience pre school to those programmes that do? Some of us know Dr Kathy Silva very well and her research shows the government is doing excellently in terms of nursery provision; it makes a real difference and adds enormous value, but she does say you can teach parenting if you do it consistently and not in some nice, warm cuddly environment. You have to know what you want to achieve in a Sure Start situation. Why is government not doing more about this quickly?

Mr Twigg: We do need to do more about it, and it is a priority. I do not think it is as simple as saying you switch resources because it is often saying that there is somewhere that has very good practice, somewhere else that has poor and lots of places in between, and it is about how you can most effectively share that best practice so it applies in the other places. I do not think you do not make those places better by taking the resources away from them but by giving them the support and challenge they need to succeed.

Q177 Valerie Davey: The consistent element for a child throughout these different phases are the parents, and I think Kevan mentioned earlier on the element in the jigsaw is the parental background. I think the government, in handing out books and sorting out, is doing work but what more could we do to encourage the quality and the professionalism at the schools and the Sure Start centres, but not to underestimate and defranchise the role of the parents who then feel a bit on the edge of all of this? How do we ensure they are that element of giving the love of books, the reading and all that goes with that?

Dr Collins: There is a tendency for schools to lay out for parents the sets of things they should do: "If you do these things, your child will learn to read", and we are trying to shift that slightly and say, "The language needs to change as well as the practice". We are trying to involve, inform and engage parents which all require different kinds of approaches. For example, when a school comes to a particular approach for teaching reading, it is not really appropriate and I do not think it works if a school just tells parents, "That is what we are doing" without bringing them into the debate, into the discussion, because the debates are rich and interesting around the balance between the whole book and the phonics, and parents need to be engaged in that as well as, at the end, being part of the solution. So we have been providing lots of information for schools on the ways you can do that, and the information is not art - it is just disseminating the effective practice. What we have is some extremely wonderful practice where schools are working very closely with parents and very engaged in an involved way. What we have, though, is not the right mechanisms yet to get that consistently spread across the system, so we are trying to find better ways of spreading that knowledge and that learning across the system. I would say that the solution to engaging parents will not come from the top; it has to be school‑led and school‑owned and community‑owned, and so it is not for us to say "This is how you do it" but for us to say "This is how other people are doing it; what can we do to help you do it in that way", and more facilitate the process rather than drive it.

Q178 Chairman: This all sounds very good in theory, but I go to some of my constituents' homes and I see a home with no books, no toys and a big television in the corner - and it may not even be transmitting anything in English. We are talking about nine per cent; you say that is the most difficult. You seem to be talking about everybody but the nine per cent. What do we do to reach out to these children that have no encouragement from the home, in fact have a positive discouragement in many ways? What are we doing to reach out to that nine per cent who do not get any help at all from the home?

Dr Collins: The critical thing, of course, is that the nine per cent are often parts of cycles where their families themselves have been very alienated from the education process, parents and children, and it is a cyclical process and you are breaking into something quite hard here. There are two things we are doing which I think are very powerful. We are working currently with Manchester University on something called Communication Matters which is where we are developing resources and support for parents and other adults working with children absolutely at the level of "This is how you help a child learn to talk". This is a very unnatural thing to do because for most children in the world learning to talk is a very natural process given the right kind of articulate machinery, but for some children, and I take your point it is a very small number, we have to be engaged in a slightly more assertive way, and we are developing this intervention really with very young children in nurseries, and that is working well and we are extending that currently. The other important experience is through programmes like family literacy, where you work directly with the whole family, and in my school we used to run these programmes where you have the parents engaged in learning, City and Guilds, NVQ - whatever it might have been - and at the same time you are working directly with their children and you bring them together for some of the time, and that is a real solution for some of these families. My own personal view is that the numbers are relatively small, and we should be doing it almost case by case.

Q179 Chairman: We know there is nine per cent, because the figures are showing. You said yourself, people need third way with nine per cent. That is not small.

Dr Collins: We have to be clear; some of the nine per cent include children with profound learning needs who have their own particular profile as learners which will make learning literacy difficult for them. With some of the children we can work on the context, but there will be some children who may have particular medical conditions or particular impairments, disabilities, who we will find difficult to teach to read. They are hard to teach.

Q180 Chairman: But, Minister, do you have constituents where parents do not give anything ‑‑

Mr Twigg: Absolutely.

Q181 Chairman: Are your programmes geared up to helping those, whatever percentage it may be, five? Nine?

Mr Twigg: Whatever the percentage it is important that we do everything we can. Are we doing as much as we should? No, we need to do more. Are we doing more than we used to? Yes, we are. I have been to two very similar primary schools this week, both of them in very difficult circumstances, one of which was having great difficulty engaging the sorts of parents you are talking about; another had cracked the nut and was doing it; and what that says to me is to reinforce what Kevan said - that we can provide some leadership and a framework and resources, but in the end the solutions are in the schools and the shift in our approach in Excellence and Enjoyment and the primary national strategy to schools leading schools, networks of schools and communities which can be dismissed as a kind of soft approach I do not think is a soft approach at all, because if we get that good practice from the school I was in yesterday into the school I was in the day before, then everyone will benefit from that.

Q182 Mr Turner: Val was told by one of our witnesses that in a particular nursery in Tower Hamlets, Sylheti was the language of the nursery as well as the home, and the only English input that pupils had was from the adults in the nursery classes. I understand that it is the policy that learning opportunities should be planned to help children develop their English at the Foundation stage?

Dr Collins: Of course.

Q183 Mr Turner: How successful are nurseries at doing that?

Mr Twigg: Obviously on this particular instance I am not sighted of that and I would have to look at that evidence. I think that the practice does vary greatly from nursery to nursery and that is reflected in evidence that has been published in recent weeks and which has come before the Committee. What I think is absolutely critical is that we are taking the best practice that undoubtedly exists in a proportion of nurseries and other pre school settings, and seeking to ensure that that is universal best practice, and of course that must be in English. There can be no question about that.

Q184 Mr Turner: But you would accept that you do not know, because this is what Margaret Hodge told me in an answer, "Information on a proportion of children not able to be taut in English in the Reception year is not collected?

Mr Twigg: Not able to be taught in English because the school is not in a position to have the instruction, or ‑‑

Q185 Mr Turner: The question was "What proportion of pupils in each local education authority are not able to be taught in English in year R"? Information is not collected, according to Margaret.

Mr Twigg: Far be it from me to contradict Margaret Hodge ‑‑

Q186 Mr Turner: How can you do the job if the information is not collected?

Mr Twigg: I would think via the Foundation stage profile that is information we are now collecting, but I would have to clarify that. The Foundation stage profile has been criticised for the amount of information we ask for; and the benefit of it is we are collecting that sort of information via the profile.

Q187 Mr Turner: But given how difficult it is, your targets for Sure Start nationally only include in one year, that is SR 2003, a target in relation to the proportion of children having normal levels of communication, language and literacy at the end of the Foundation stage. Why have you only thought it necessary to have that target for Sure Start in one of your three years of the programme, that is PSA3?

Mr McCully: Sure Start has grown now from what we all conceived of for Sure Start, and I think that target relates to the standards at the end of the Foundation stage, so it is not purely a narrow target.

Q188 Mr Turner: You say it is not purely a "narrow target". It applies to those Sure Start settings which have entered the programme in 2003.

Mr McCully: Indeed. Sorry, yes.

Q189 Mr Turner: But not 2002 or 2004. Why not?

Mr Twigg: I do not think any of us are in a position to answer that, and we need to respond to the Committee.

Chairman: We will move on. We will get a written reply to that.

Q190 Mr Turner: In your evidence at paragraph 27, you talk about how OFSTED inspect and find very successful the teaching of National Literacy Strategy. Do they report on the type of teaching of phonics that is undertaken?

Dr Collins: Yes.

Q191 Mr Turner: What is their evidence?

Dr Collins: We have the full reports - we have the HMCI report, and the report on literacy, but also reports from OFSTED on phonics - and the evidence is clear that the schools that do well are schools that provide a structured phonics programme. They have not gone further than to say that really. We have not started having the bidding war between this programme and that programme because it gets into all sorts of commercial fun and games, but what we do know is that a structured phonics programme is what is required to ensure that you have the very best basis for a good literacy model.

Q192 Mr Turner: But would it not be helpful if you knew which structured phonics programme?

Dr Collins: We do not know which is the best in that sense because they are very context bound. Your example of Sylheti speaking children in Tower Hamlets is quite interesting because equally I would argue that there are certain phonics programmes that work well for those children, whereas if I was teaching children, as I have in Tower Hamlets but also in West Yorkshire in, say, Ilkeley, I would use a different phonics programme, so the programme is fairly context bound and that is important. You cannot say "This is the best programme". It is given the training of the teachers, the context you work in, and then you choose the best programme. What we have done for schools is do a review, if you like, or a synopsis of the different programmes and say "Here are the strengths and weaknesses; here are the kind of programmes there are", and that was laid out in the evidence in the seminar, "you choose the one that is right for you".

Q193 Mr Turner: So teachers are able to engage in not only the process but also how the programme works psychologically?

Dr Collins: Yes.

Q194 Mr Turner: You are confident of that?

Dr Collins: When I say I am confident it depends on the teacher and on the school, but if I go and see Jolly Phonics in Clackmannanshire and in Kent I often see two different programmes at work - around the same basis and around the same fundamentals but the interpretation and the application has a slight variation based on the context which for me is right.

Q195 Mr Turner: Who designed the Searchlight model, and who is the author of the National Literacy Strategy?

Dr Collins: A group of us. The key architect, if you were naming people, would be John Stannard, who was the first director. I was part of the initial group as well but the author and ownership is not something we would claim. It is basically gathered, as you see in the review of research which Roger Beard conducted on our website is from Best Practice and from a collection of work by teachers and educationalists over the last 30 years in literacy teaching.

Q196 Mr Turner: And who designed the Searchlight model?

Dr Collins: Who first drew it out? That was something which three or four of us sat down at one point and did but it is drawn from the work of Rummelhart, it is drawn from the work of Marie Clay, it is drawn from the work of Priestley and the comprehension theorists - it is a visual representation of a view that good readers attend to an array of information, and the priority of information when you are young is developing the phonic knowledge. But equally children are active learners and they will, and should, use other knowledge that is available, and in the theory of redundancy, which is key to us, as they develop one of their searchlights like phonics in the first couple of years, that searchlight begins to dim in explicit ways and they begin to pick up other searchlights like context when they are trying to inferential comprehension which is critical in the later years.

Q197 Chairman: Would I be naive, Dr Collins, in saying that the evidence we have received is that there is a kind of ideological purism that we have heard that phonics is the only way. You understand the code of language, you must be taught as a child to break that code, and once you have done that the whole world opens, but nothing should sully that: It is the one faith, the true faith, the only faith. The other is a more pragmatic view that you are articulating that a child should be given phonics but a range of other entries into learning to read, and that is the more pragmatic one, and the two really are not compatible if you are a purist.

Mr McCully: I think there is an even further end of the spectrum. The pragmatic view is more or less in the middle and from some of our earlier experiences before the National Strategy we found there will be some teachers who would even go further beyond a pragmatic approach to one which is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Q198 Chairman: What is the opposite end of the spectrum?

Mr Twigg: Anti phonics.

Q199 Chairman: No phonics at all?

Mr Twigg: Yes. It should all be books - read the books and - the third way!

Q200 Chairman: So you are in the middle. You are the pragmatic centre.

Mr Twigg: Evidence‑based.

Dr Collins: For us at the Early Years the phonics is the dominant learning but what we are saying is you do not live there; you are there for a while as you put the learning together and then you are moving up, but we run with the grain of what children do as active learners, and they need all this learning.

Chairman: I think we have a good sense of that.

Mr Gibb: How long should it take for a child to be able to decode any word, or the majority of words ‑ not necessarily the standard word but just to decode.

Q201 Helen Jones: And does that include "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"!

Dr Collins: The phonic knowledge that we lay out in seven steps in the Progression of Phonics for Children which we provide should be in place by the beginning or middle of year two, and then should go subterranean for us and we attend to other knowledge. But the explicit teaching of it is over by year two.

Q202 Mr Gibb: But the euphonics people say they can get every child decoding within 12 weeks.

Dr Collins: We get every child decoding ‑‑

Q203 Mr Gibb: That is what I asked.

Dr Collins: They will be decoding by the end of reception.

Q204 Mr Gibb: So under the NLS every child can decode after one year in reception?

Dr Collins: The basic decoding, the CVC, is part of reception teaching.

Q205 Mr Gibb: So are you saying that under the NLS we are getting 99 per cent of children decoding by the end of the year R?

Dr Collins: I cannot give you an exact figure on it, no.

Mr Gibb: Can you send in an exact figure, please?

Chairman: He cannot accept something that he cannot give. Dr Collins, if you cannot give that figure, you must say so.

Q206 Mr Gibb: Can you give it at all?

Dr Collins: We do not know that.

Q207 Mr Gibb: Finally, is it the case that the structured phonics programmes, and you are right, there are an array of them and no one is saying that one is better than the other, based on the evidence that you have collected, that work best are the ones that have texts which do not go beyond the phonics knowledge of the children who are reading them? Would you say they are the ones that work best? What does the evidence show?

Dr Collins: No, I would not say that. I would say they work best in being able to demonstrate that children have learned the phonic knowledge. They do not demonstrate that children are learning the other knowledge around the development of context, syntax and the other parts of reading which, in my view, are also important. They do not demonstrate that knowledge at all.

Chairman: Good. We now move onto Key Stage 1 and 2 tests and Jeff is going to open the questioning. Jeff has been very patient.

Q208 Jeff Ennis: Minister, why have we changed the format with the Key Stage 1 tests?

Mr Twigg: Because I wanted to listen to real concerns that were being raised by those working in schools, particularly by teachers and headteachers in Key Stage 1 in infant and primary schools, and I believe we have a system in place. People are leaving. I thought everyone was here for this item. They are all going outdoors, yes, that is right!

Chairman: To be fair, they are the out-of-school lobby. Jeffrey, sorry about that.

Q209 Jeff Ennis: That is alright. It is the effect I have! Sorry, Stephen, have you finished?

Mr Twigg: I got the primary part of the job two years ago and one of the first things we did was to have a whole series of conferences with primary headteachers. During a period of nine months we met about 7,000 primary headteachers and their input was critical to Excellence and Enjoyment. One aspect of Excellence and Enjoyment was to say that we can assess children at seven in a slightly different way and still achieve the positive benefits of having that assessment, and I think that is the system we now have in place.

Q210 Jeff Ennis: So we have listened to the teachers and we have listened to the parents and the children. What benefits do those stakeholders have in changing the test to this mode, shall we say?

Mr Twigg: I think the new system is one that is more flexible. It is worth reminding ourselves that Key Stage 1 assessment under the old system was very different to Key Stage 2 assessment, and I think a lot of the public debate and media coverage suggested that somehow seven‑year‑olds were sitting the same sort of tests as 11‑year‑olds when they were not. Under the old system we did separately report test results and the task outcomes and what was said to us was that for seven‑year‑olds that was not the best way of assessing how well they are doing and that we can put trust in teachers' own professional judgment of how well seven‑year‑olds are doing. We have conducted a pilot, as you will know, in around a quarter of schools and LEAs in the last academic year. That pilot was evaluated by Leeds University, and it was a very positive evaluation, and I was persuaded by the outcome of that that this is a new system that we can operate in all of our Key Stage 1 schools from this year.

Q211 Jeff Ennis: There has been concern about teaching to the tests at Key Stage 2 which seems to be more and more prevalent and which, it is argued, has led both false indications of achievement and a narrowing of the curriculum being taught. Would not the model now being used for Key Stage 1 take away the pressure for teaching to the tests, and help to keep a broad curriculum for children in year six?

Mr Twigg: I certainly feel very strongly that we do not want schools to teach for the tests. I do sometimes hear what you have described, Jeff, and it concerns me greatly because I do not think that is the purpose of having testing. I am very encouraged by the numbers of schools that do not do that, often including schools in challenging circumstances that still produce very good test results. What was pretty striking in Key Stage 1 under the old system is that there was not a great difference between test results and teacher assessment so that was very positive. I think the concern about moving to that system for Key Stage 2 is that Key Stage 2 is such a critical stage, particularly with respect to the benchmarking that we do looking at the progress that has been made school-by-school, and we are able to use the detail and consistency of the data at age 11 for lots of different important purposes, for example identifying the issue of writing, and in particular boys' writing. It is also a very useful tool for some of the work that we are doing to raise ethnic minority achievement because we now have through the PLASC data highly detailed information about how different ethnic minorities do, not just authority-by-authority but school-by-school, and it is useful to have the test for that purpose as well. Eleven is different to seven is my short answer.

Q212 Jeff Ennis: Given that Key Stage 2 tests, as you have just indicated, are so important from a benchmarking point of view, should there not be a more diagnostic element to the testing at Key Stage 1?

Mr Twigg: I think we want that element to be there. We certainly do not believe that tests are the only way in which the diagnostic approach can be taken by the teacher. The test is in a sense a snapshot. The diagnostic work by a teacher is day in day out through the assessment that the teacher is making.

Q213 Jeff Ennis: Okay. At the start of today's evidence we looked at international comparisons though PISA. If we look at international comparisons in terms of the amount of testing, then I think we have got the "yellow jersey" in world terms because our kids are tested to death. We have taken evidence from other countries who have said, "Why do you test your children so many times? What is the point of it? It is the law of diminishing returns," et cetera. Are we not reaching the point now because schools are improving year-on-year where we are trying to make sure that every school is a good school ‑ and it is going to take a long time to get there but we are certainly on the path down that particular road ‑ where we ought to be thoroughly re‑evaluating the amount of testing that goes on in this country?

Mr Twigg: Firstly to make the obvious point that we have done that in Key Stage 1 with the changes that have been made there. I have looked at some of the evidence from other countries as well and it is interesting that some countries are having the debate about whether they need to have more testing, including more national testing. In the earlier discussion we talked about Finland. I went to Finland largely because at these conferences that I have described so many of the heads were saying, "If they do not need this testing in Finland why do we need it here?" and of course in Finland they have loads of testing. What they do not have is the standardised approach that we take.

Q214 Jeff Ennis: It is more diagnostic.

Mr Twigg: It is more diagnostic but there is a lot of testing. Sometimes the argument is whether testing itself is part of the problem. It was interesting to go from Finland to Denmark where they are having something of a national crisis about their standards and where they looking at bringing in standardised testing because they have a sense they do not know how well different schools are doing. So in some places debate is moving in the direction that we have taken as a country. I think we always need to keep an eye on the evidence. We need to look at what is happening, listen to people's concerns, which is what we did at Key Stage 1. You can never totally close the door on change but I do think some of the summative benefits of testing for wider purposes of school improvement and school standards mean that it makes sense still to have the tests as we have them at eleven and 14.

Mr McCully: Perhaps I could add to that on the importance of tests for teachers in Key Stage 1. We have made significant changes this year but the tests remain within the process because it is absolutely crucial for informing the teachers' judgment, and that is what the teachers were saying as from the pilot and in the evaluation, that the role of the tests in Key Stage 1 was still absolutely essential to what they wanted in terms of their classroom experience.

Q215 Chairman: Minister, you have said several times in this session that you get out and about a lot of which we all approve. We ourselves visit a lot of schools. When you go you must see the same things we do. You must hear people saying, "We are over-tested. We are over‑examined and we cannot teach because the curriculum is so restrictive and there is not the flexibility to actually use our skills to teach." Is that not what you are hearing?

Mr Twigg: Sometimes. I mentioned we have had this big programme of conferences with heads. We had a conference last week with a group of heads who have successfully combined excellence, including some schools in very challenging circumstances, with that broader curriculum. I think the Ofsted report that was published last year demonstrates that that combination is possible. So, yes, I do still sometimes hear that. Part of the challenge that we have got is for schools to have the confidence that they can go beyond what are often perceived constraints on what they can do with respect to the national curriculum. A major part of the purpose of Excellence and Enjoyment is to encourage and foster that confidence in the system, and I think it is growing. I genuinely think that it is a growing confidence about embracing that broader and richer curriculum without in any way damaging standards in literacy and literacy.

Q216 Chairman: We have seen a very different approach in terms of inspection. We are moving to a lighter touch inspection. We are learning that inspection has to change over time. Is not this change in Key Stage 1 really you saying that you can have a great deal of testing and examining full time but after a while it ceases to have its usefulness, the utility diminishes? Are you not really listening to what this Committee has been saying for some time and you have moved to what you are doing in Key Stage 1 but really you are playing your cards close to your chest? You have recognised it, have you not, that you are moving away from such a stringent testing regime?

Mr Twigg: I think what I would say - and clearly there is the evidence that we have just discussed with respect to Key Stage 1 but also with respect to some of the other changes in the school profile - is that we are recognising that you cannot simply have an accountability system based on raw test results, which I know is something this Committee has been telling us for some time, and the school profile which is a reflection of the work that is going on with respect to value added is a very important reflection of that as well. I still feel you need to have robust data with respect to how well children are doing at different key stages, for example to be able to have value added. If we did not have the test outcomes then we could not look at what the value added is between Key Stage 2 and 3 and between Key Stage 3 and 4, so I think we still want testing to be there as an important weapon in our armoury with respect to both accountability and diagnosis. I do accept that we are putting that in a broader context than we used to.

Q217 Valerie Davey: Can I say that certainly Excellence and Enjoyment sends out the right message and everywhere I have been that report above any other in primary schools has been welcomed. We have still got testing at Key Stage 2. How satisfied are you with the progress which young people are making at Key Stage 2?

Mr Twigg: I was very pleased this year that we saw a significant improvement in the English results at Key Stage 2 and a further modest improvement in the Mathematics results. It is not as good as we want it to be. The 85 per cent figure, which is our national target, is not some figure that we plucked out of the air; it is based on an assessment of what schools can achieve. I was at Stockwell Primary School last week in Lambeth which is a school where getting on for half the pupils are on free school meals and the majority speak English as an additional language. In that school they achieved the national targets. If they can do it I believe that we can do it nationally. Clearly there are some children with particular forms of special educational needs who are not going to achieve a level four so 100 per cent is not attainable but I do believe that 85 per cent is. So, yes, I am pleased that it is upward again, it is good progress, in some schools it is remarkable progress, but there are still too many schools that are under‑performing and that is why we are not achieving the 85 per cent yet.

Dr Collins: Not only do we have that aspiration in 2004 for the first time we asked schools to set their own targets (not national targets) for what they thought they would achieve in 2005 and beyond, and schools' own targets take us further as well. Schools are saying that there is further to go. Can I say something about the testing at Key Stage 1. Stephen has talked about the need for benchmarked robust data for us to compare schools. The other critical thing for a year two teacher or for a year six teacher is that they have some good evidence themselves which benchmarks their children against other children. Previous to the tests of course we went to the days when teachers had to manage some great big portfolio of work not knowing where their children stood at year two with any other child at year two, whereas this gives you a good, robust bit of information which allows you to compare your own children. It is downgrading the status of the test but lifting up the status of teacher assessment. It is the balance between the two that is important, not one or the other.

Q218 Valerie Davey: The 85 per cent you said you I believe in very passionately. Are we evidence‑based for our 85 per cent?

Mr Twigg: Yes, the 85 per cent was based on looking at free school meal band by free school band taking the top 50 per cent and if all of the schools in that free school meal band could achieve the average for the top 50 per cent you would get to 85 per cent.

Dr Collins: Not the averaged outcome but the average rate of progress with their children.

Q219 Valerie Davey: So is the 85 per cent now for 2006 a realistic target or is that something that is going to slip again?

Mr Twigg: It is ambitious. We have gone this year from 75 to 78. We would hope to make further progress again next year. It would be great to hit 85 in both subjects. My sense on this is that what is important is that we build on the progress. Much as I very much want us to achieve the 85 per cent for 2006, the bigger test for me is that we continue to see the progress towards that over these next two years.

Q220 Valerie Davey: I very much appreciate that you have allowed schools to set their own benchmark because I think that is encouraging and it is recognising their professionalism. Does it allow you perhaps to recognise that not every year is going to be steady progress? I had the top national school for primary schools in my constituency a couple of years ago. They could tell me quite readily that this was a particularly good year. 97 youngsters got four in the English, Maths and Science. "Next year it will not be the same, Valerie. We have got some youngsters there who are really struggling and we cannot expect them to do that." That is realism, is it not?

Mr Twigg: It is absolutely vital that we have that recognition. Clearly one year group will vary compared to the previous and the next year group. What is fascinating about the change we have made on target setting - and it is probably the sort of change a few years ago we might have been a bit nervous about making - is that the targets that the schools themselves are setting based exactly on the knowledge they have got that you have described is coming out of something very robust that sees further improvement in the coming year. What that says to me is that the shift towards a greater trust in the professional judgment of teachers is reflected in that and in the Key Stage 1 change and it is something that is not in any way taking challenge out of the system with respect to literacy and numeracy standards.

Q221 Valerie Davey: The real challenge we have all got is to ensure that boys do as well, particularly in English at Key Stage 2. What are the teachers telling you that we ought to be doing about boys in primary school?

Dr Collins: We have just recently completed a piece of research with the United Kingdom Literacy Association looking at successful strategies to raise boys' achievement. We have seen a good improvement this year of four per cent in boys' attainment, which is above the national average, so we are pleased we have seen a closing of the gap. The priorities relate to some of the fundamental things we talked about earlier on. The early work that keeps boys enthused and engaged in the kind of texts that you use. Making sure that it is not just a narrative-based literature and there is a lot of non‑fiction. Helping boys to make a link between their reading and their writing, which again is important in the phonics debate because reading is not only about phonics, it is about reading for writing. Also linking the literacy much more closely to other curriculum areas so boys can see purpose in what they are doing and how it will help them in other curriculum areas. They are the kind of approaches that we are providing. We have just been developing, as I say, with the UKLA good resources and materials for schools which are building on a bank that is already there. We are seeing now progress in boys' writing, particularly in the last couple of years, which is great.

Mr McCully: That is achievement in boys' writing. We have got further to go in terms of boys' reading. Certainly the improvements that Kevan is talking about are specifically in writing.

Q222 Valerie Davey: Does that not go right back to the earlier question which we had from Helen about those very early years where to my knowledge (which is limited as a parent and former teacher) young boys take longer to co‑ordinate eye and hand to pick up a pen and write. I had two daughters and a son and I thought my son was just going to be a demolition expert. Nothing he did was constructive. It all had to go bash. Are we putting the pen or pencil into a boy's hand too early? Are we just not looking at that very early development. I am not talking about all boys. I am talking in general terms. It is that very early bit where boys fail at an early age and therefore are not given that encouragement to progress.

Dr Collins: The evidence, of course, does not quite square up with that because we see many boys doing very well at the early stages. I think rather than categorical statements about boys and girls it is about the curriculum being responsive to individual children and what we are encouraging through the foundation stage curriculum is much more play‑based learning so that children are engaged in a rich play environment, and that takes us to that other discussion we had earlier about the quality of provision in early years, but it is absolutely appropriate that boys by the time they leave reception are able to have fine motor control, be able to write key words and begin that process. You are right, however, it has got to be appropriate for the child and it has got to be a transition into Key Stage 1. That relates to the Key Stage 1 test issue as well because at the beginning of year one, term one we were seeing many teachers preoccupied by the fact that just six terms away was the Key Stage 1 test. Now what they are preoccupied, quite rightly, is teacher assessment and the test so they can begin to have a smoother transition into the early formal learning at year one, which is another key outcome and reason for changing the testing programme and the reporting programme at the end of Key Stage 1.

Q223 Chairman: Are we in danger of being rather sexist about this? I do not remember so much of an obsession with under‑performance of girls when boys were scoring higher than girls. Quite honestly, my own personal opinion is that I think women are brighter than men. I have three daughters and a son. I see that among middle managers now women earn more on average than men and thank goodness for that. We should celebrate this, should we not, that the brightest kids are coming through and they happen to be women? Sorry, that is not a question. Can I ask you about London briefly. How is London doing in all this in terms of achievements and testing? What is the picture in London?

Mr Twigg: It is very positive. As you will recall from previous evidence, we are approaching London at three levels: a set of London‑wide challenges; a set of schools that we call the Keys to Success; and five London boroughs that we are focusing particularly on for secondary improvement. On the latest GSCE results the number of Greater London GCSE five A* to Cs is marginally above the national average for the first time ever. Inner London is still behind but Inner London's rate of progress over the last three years has been significantly better than in the rest of the country and most of the five key boroughs are improving significantly year‑on‑year. So there is some really good progress. Most of the schools that we have described as Keys to Success have again improved significantly more than average, admittedly from a low base but have done that. Some have not and we are putting in extra support for those who have not. We have also given a particular priority to London within the academies programme as part of the London Challenge.

Mr McCully: We have not talked at all about Key Stage 3 specifically so far in the evidence but just on the London point this certainly relates back to earlier discussions about reading. The improvements at Key Stage 3 results in London certainly outstripped most other areas of the country this year, particularly around English results where in some of the boroughs with the poorest performing schools such as Southwark, such as Lambeth, such as Hackney, such as Islington, the improvements in English ‑ reading and writing ‑ at Key Stage 3 were very, very significant this year.

Q224 Chairman: Why are you not communicating this better to the media then, Minister?

Mr Twigg: We do our very best to communicate this and one of the things that I am doing right now, further to your earlier point about my visits to schools, is a programme of visits to each London local education authority. It is my second programme and part of the reason for this is to communicate at a local as well as a national and regional level about some of the improvements that are happening.

Q225 Chairman: Can you explain to the Committee, Minister, why is it then (because I am not a London Member of Parliament) that in the regions, which I know much better, I see my local media celebrating achievement and they will always pick up a good story about educational achievement and so on whereas in London when you look at the Evening Standard and the Metro they seem to hate the capital city that they work for? They despise it. Every story you see about education is about failure and trouble and misery. What is it about your London media that is so poisonous?

Mr Twigg: I should tread carefully! In my experience of the last two and a half years we have had more luck with some of the media outlets than others and certainly some of the television coverage, where we can get it, for the work that we have been doing through the London Challenge has been very, very positive, and I would certainly praise the television channels in London and their regional programmes for the balanced approach that they have taken that has enabled us to get the message across about success. I would also praise some of the local or sub-regional newspapers that have taken a balanced approach and therefore some of the positive things that have happened have come across through those newspapers.

Q226 Chairman: Am I wrong in believing that the Metro and Standard seem to pedal this negative image of London, especially in education?

Mr Twigg: We have been very keen to ensure a balanced approach from all of the different outlets in London.

Q227 Chairman: What have you done with Tim Brighouse?

Mr Twigg: Tim Brighouse remains our chief adviser. When I was originally appointed he was Commissioner for London Schools.

Q228 Chairman: He is safe, is he?

Mr Twigg: He is very safe. For reasons of his own health he had to reduce his hours and that is straightforwardly the reason.

Q229 Chairman: We did not know that.

Mr Twigg: When his doctor advised him to cut back on his hours, I wanted him to stay, he is absolutely central to the London Challenge, and he wanted to stay, so we agreed a slightly different role for him and we agreed that that reason would be something that we would tell people if people asked. It is for reasons of his health.

Q230 Chairman: We are very sad indeed to hear about that because we hold him in high esteem. He is very keen on collegiates and schools working together. I would have thought he would be very worried about the Queen's Speech Education Bill in the sense that one meeting of governors can make any school a foundation school which means it opens its premises and opens its buildings. Would that not go right against this whole notion of collegiates and co‑operation among schools because you are going to have little independent schools which have got no reason to co‑operate?

Mr Twigg: I will not speculate about what Tim would say but certainly my own view is that there is no contradiction between having that greater autonomy for schools and having a culture in which schools co‑operate and collaborate successfully with each other. In fact, London in some respects is already leading the way in this regard. One of the most innovative academy projects in London involves the bringing together of one of the most successful schools, Haberdashers' Aske's in Lewisham, with one of the least successful schools in Lewisham to create a single school, and I think that demonstrates that there is in many parts of London (although not everywhere) a culture that is willing to see the collaboration and collegiality that Tim rightly promotes and which is certainly the culture of the London Challenge.

Q231 Paul Holmes: As part of your ministerial responsibilities you are responsible for the school curriculum. I can recall in about 1998 a Government adviser coming in on a teacher training day to talk to the secondary school I worked at about the new national literacy strategy. I asked, "How are you going to do all this when the schools have got to implement the national curriculum as well?" and he said, "That is simple. We are going to suspend parts of the national curriculum and allow them not to do the whole curriculum because we have got to make room in the timetable." Since then in the last few years the Government have introduced citizenship. We are saying that teachers should be doing all this outdoor education. We are saying that PE and sport should be two hours rather one hour a week. We are saying that schools should be covering everything ‑ drugs, alcohol, parenting, financial management. How do we fit everything into the school curriculum? Do we expect far too much of schools?

Mr Twigg: Kevan often tells people and I am taking his lines from him, we could ask the teachers to teach faster. That is a joke! Clearly there is a lot that we are expecting of schools and it is not practical in the school day for everything to be done. Part of the message of Excellence and Enjoyment, and in a sense part of the message of Tomlinson as well is about choices being made, is about schools taking some more control over how the curriculum is applied within their own school. We are very comfortable with saying there is a set of the basics that we expect schools to be doing but beyond that we expect schools to make choices. Even in primary schools it is for schools to make a choice perhaps between a focus on music or a focus on foreign languages. It is not going to be practical for every school to do all of these things in the same way. I accept that of course that is a very different approach to what the government minister would have said sitting here 15 years ago or five years ago but that reflects the way that things have moved on.

Q232 Paul Holmes: Are you now saying that you are going to extend that flexibility to all schools because in the last two or three years it has always been if you were a specialist school, if were an academy, if you were a certain type of school we would give you the flexibility to ignore the national curriculum, to vary it as you like, but other schools will have to toe the line and do as they are told. Are you now saying that all schools can have flexibility or is it still just selected groups?

Mr Twigg: I do not think it should just be selected groups. We do want this to be a broad principle. The only thing that would prevent me saying all schools is clearly there is a set of schools that is facing particularly strong challenges. For example, in the area we have been looking at just now, some primary schools are still very badly under-performing with respect to the core priorities of literacy and numeracy, and I think we have to maintain mechanisms that ensure that those schools are giving the full priority to literacy and numeracy that is needed to make the process. I think we have moved from the position of saying those are freedoms for a small number of schools to earn to saying those are freedoms that typically schools should have, unless there are exceptional reasons.

Dr Collins: It is a very difficult business, as you know, to craft that kind of curriculum. It takes quite a lot knowledge and confidence. That is why, as Andrew said earlier, we are investing so much in the leadership of schools. We currently train one in ten primary heads who work with us as consultant leaders who then go on to work with other schools. The focus is on raising standards and yet at the same time we need to be raising standards in the context of a broad and enriched curriculum, and you very quickly get to the discussion how do you craft the curriculum so that it relates and feeds the personality of my school, the character of my school, and meets the needs of my children? That is exactly where you get to. I think that is best done with colleagues who are in the business rather than coming down from the top saying this is how you do it.

Mr McCully: I should add that your example of academies was referring to the secondary curriculum of course, and the curriculum was reviewed at Key Stage 4 just a few years ago. In the five‑year strategy that the Government published earlier this year, there was a commitment to review the Key Stage 1 curriculum and some of those issues that you have just been raising about the time and focus of that curriculum will be central to the review.

Q233 Mr Pollard: Could I go back to the added value, Minister. A primary school in my constituency, Camp School, has 50 per cent Bengali children at it. It has been well led with different headteachers over the last ten or 12 years and as soon as added value comes into the scheme of things local parents have got much more confidence and now the school for the first time ever has a waiting list. Should we have been putting that added value in much earlier?

Mr Twigg: Yes we should, certainly. I think there is a real issue about getting added value to be part of the currency of debate and discussion of how well schools do. I think we are getting there. It is slow but we are getting there. We do now see newspapers as they publish their league tables not only publishing those that have come top in terms of raw results but also value added and progress. I think progress measures are important as well as value added measures, so yes.

Q234 Mr Pollard: Could I widen it again. We talked earlier about reading and literacy and all of that. You mentioned yourself about Finland having a culture of reading. We do not in this country have a culture of reading. We are open to TV games, computer games, reality TV, a whole range of things which militate against reading being part of our culture. Are we doing enough? For example, we talk about obesity as being a problem and there are television adverts like nobody's business. Reading is equally important. Our whole culture and our quality of life depends on reading. We are not doing anywhere near enough. What more should we be doing? Should we see you advertising on the TV reading a book?

Mr Twigg: One of the things we do try to do is to use role models, probably ones who are more known by children than I am, to advertise! Perish the thought! And the National Year of Reading was obviously a very good opportunity to do that. This does come back, notwithstanding the Chairman's comments, particularly to role models that are going to relate to boys, who are often more reluctant to take up reading. There is a whole host of different programmes that are encouraging children to focus on reading and writing that we are doing with a range of organisations.

Q235 Mr Pollard: I was thinking about the parents as well. It is a whole family thing.

Mr Twigg: Absolutely and some of those are about working with the broader family. Last week I was at an event for something called Write Here, Write Now. That is encouraging children's writing but clearly there is a connection there with reading. It was striking how families were getting engaged with the projects of those children who have successfully come through that competition. 29,000 had taken part in that across the country and that is a significant example of the sort of programme that we have got. The Committee may be aware that Ofsted is publishing a report on reading next week and I think that will be a very important opportunity, alongside the outcome of your deliberations, for us to look at what more we can do.

Q236 Chairman: There is a programme in Yorkshire sponsored by the Yorkshire Post where people from all walks of life go into schools and read. Is that a national programme now?

Mr Twigg: It is a national programme and I have certainly seen it in London in Tower Hamlets and Hackney where people working in the City go in and do this as mentors in primary and secondary schools. It definitely has a very positive impact.

Mr McCully: One example of a programme that we promote and sponsor with the National Literacy Trust is called Reading Champions which looks at role models, particularly for boys but more generally, and we would be keen to get role models from all walks of life ranging from those who are simply in their community, scout leaders or whatever, to those with a greater iconic status. We would be delighted if we were able to get a much greater involvement in that programme but it is very successful in terms of the excitement of children in their school and their family and their community settings.

Valerie Davey: I must add a Bristol dimension. We are doing Read a Million Words which again is another programme with wider uptake, I am sure, elsewhere. Again, it is companies which are willing to donate books particularly into school and to have that involvement with the school. We had a good launch at Bristol Zoo which was a good icon.

Q237 Chairman: Is it money? One of the things certainly with my children that stimulated their interest in poetry was having a poet visit the school and work with children. Is there money in school budgets to have real writers and real poets coming into schools? Poets are notoriously poorly financed and their income is low so this would be a very good way of increasing the love the literature, would it?

Mr McCully: Again, just to commend another important initiative that we promote called Writing Together which is precisely for that objective. It gives opportunities for schools to have a small amount of money so that they can work with a writer and very often a poet in the classroom and then more importantly look at the effects of that experience on their on‑going curriculum in school. That is led by Andrew Motion working with us. I was at an event last night where we were looking at the next development, again led by Andrew Motion, for that initiative, so, again, for those schools who have not heard about it yet we would dearly love them to engage with us.

Q238 Chairman: Minister, we are coming to the end of this session, but I must ask you, before Nick puts a last point on reading, what are you up to with David Miliband in terms of academies? The word is that the Department is going round bullying people on academies, that you are saying, "Okay, we did promise to rebuild or to renovate every school in the country", but that seems to have slipped, and now you have got officials going round saying, "We are not going to look very kindly on your building programme because you have not put in for an academy." Is that true?

Mr Twigg: No, I do not think that is true at all. We have certainly said that we want the Building Schools for the Future programme to be a programme of investment but also an opportunity to look at the educational challenges community‑by-community. Certainly I lead on academies in London and we have been able to work very well with authorities in London with respect to the role that academies will play. Those academies will be focused in some of the areas of greatest need, so boroughs like Hackney and Southwark will have very, very significant numbers of academies. We are working very well indeed with the authorities and others in both those cases to achieve that.

Q239 Chairman: So you are not as a Department putting any frighteners or leaning on LEAs or schools or anyone out there to have an academy?

Mr Twigg: There are occasions when we certainly do want LEAs and schools to have academies.

Q240 Chairman: You know what I mean, Minister. It is the difference between friendly persuasion and saying, "You are not going to get this unless you do that," in terms of academies?

Mr Twigg: I have found that friendly persuasion is the most effective way of persuading people.

Q241 Chairman: But your budget has slipped. All that hype that you and David Miliband gave about how many schools are going to renovated by 2015.

Mr Twigg: It is a massive programme.

Q242 Chairman: But you are only talking about three schools in each LEA now.

Mr Twigg: It depends which stage of Building Schools for the Future each local authority is at. Clearly there are issues about those authorities that are going to be in the latter part of the programme and how many schools can be renovated or rebuilt in those authorities. Part of what we wanted to do was to ensure that there is sufficient money in the capital programme to meet the needs of schools and authorities that are further down the queue for Building Schools for the Future. They may be authorities that will not have the majority dealt with by 2015 because we always said that this was a programme that would take longer than ten years.

Chairman: It is all very well in London, is it not Minister, but take Jeff Ennis's constituency where he was having a struggle getting £50,000 for a specialist school ---

Jeff Ennis: £7,000, never mind £50,000.

Q243 Chairman: £50,000 is a lot of money. It is alright if you are in Canary Wharf and you have all those banks like UBS and HSBC, but what about the parts of the country where £2 million is difficult to find? What are you going to do about Jeff Ennis's patch if they want an academy? They can only go to the evangelical wing of the Anglican movement. Is that their only opportunity?

Mr Twigg: Not at all and we are making a very proactive effort to encourage sponsors to go to all parts of the country. It is certainly true on academies that there will sometimes be a preference for London or perhaps some of the other big cities and we are addressing that in a very systematic way. On specialist schools of course we have the fund that is designed to assist those schools that are unable to raise the £50,000.

Q244 Chairman: Tesco's boast that £1 in £7 spent in this country goes into Tesco's through their checkout. What are you doing to encourage these big supermarkets and banks that suck so much money out of our communities to put something back?

Mr Twigg: We have, as you are probably aware, a business unit based in the Department that plays a very proactive role in trying to get Tesco's and other businesses engaged with different educational programmes. Clearly some companies do a lot of this work and others do not do so much. We want to put every bit of encouragement their way for them to do so.

Q245 Chairman: Could you not start naming and shaming some of these companies, the ones that do and the ones that do not? This is a very important point.

Mr Twigg: It is a very important point.

Q246 Chairman: Some of these people suck so much out of our communities, they destroy small businesses and at the same time nothing seems to come back. £2 million would seem a pittance to put back into a community.

Mr Twigg: And of course we do have those who are making that contribution. I am not sure we would want to go down the road of naming and shaming but we can certainly be very positive about those that are making the contribution. I would hope that that could be one tool that we can use to persuade those that are not that they should do so as well.

Q247 Mr Gibb: We had reached a very interesting point in our discussions with Dr Collins about the key differences between the NLS and what the various phonics groups are arguing for. This is about the texts used and you said that the NLS used texts that go beyond the phonics knowledge of the children. Can I just probe you on that a bit and say are we just talking about irregular but commonly used words or are we talking about words that could be decoded, they are decodable words, but the words go beyond the particular stage of phonics knowledge of the children? Are we talking about the latter?

Dr Collins: We are talking about both, so we are talking about texts that often have irregular words, some you know by sight vocab, some you do not yet because you have not been taught them, and some phonic words where you can apply the knowledge you have. For example, you may have the CVC knowledge but you do not have the double vowel in the middle of the word and you are not quite able to sort that word out. Our approach would be to say you encourage the children to use all the strategies they have and through the text you often learn more, but the phonics teaching, which is fast and ambitious which is going alongside, will very quickly get you to the point where you are able to decode all of those words.

Q248 Mr Gibb: None of the phonics people argue that you should not be teaching words like "the" or "then" because those are the irregular words you need to make a sentence sound proper, but they would challenge you on these words that you could decode once you have learnt the graphemes and the phonemes. What I want to ask you is if you have not got that phonics knowledge to decode a word how does the child read it?

Dr Collins: What the child does is they bring the four aspects of the searchlights to bear. They bring their knowledge of phonics to get the first consonant. The dominant consonant is the first thing and they get to bits of the word. They use other information ‑ the context, maybe the picture, the evolving story. They use their syntactic knowledge, the kind of grammar and pattern of English, and they use their graphic knowledge. They bring those things to bear to try and solve that word. There are some words at the beginning of reading which you cannot read and then you have got this great other asset which is an adult to help you. What we encourage children to do is to be active learners and to try new things. I have a problem with texts that are completely bound by what children already know. It is quite helpful to have some words in a text which require you to be active and begin to problem solve because I think that is what a lot of reading is about.

Q249 Mr Gibb: I do not think that is necessarily a better method of reading. I disagree. I have seen seven‑year‑old children guessing words and just pretending to read and they would flounder without a picture. Why did we need an NLS in the first place in 1996‑97? What was going on in our schools in the ten years before that? Why has it become so necessary?

Dr Collins: The principal problem was that there was no place where literacy ‑ and I think reading is the priority in the early years ‑ where reading and writing was taught. There was no moment in the day when this was our focus. It was lost in an integrated curriculum and literacy teaching ‑ I think we would agree on this ‑ requires some very focused and structured teaching in the early years. I would say on your earlier point I would be appalled if I saw a seven-year-old who was just guessing words.

Q250 Mr Gibb: I see it often

Dr Collins: What I would want to see seven‑year‑olds using the knowledge that they have but also attempting at problem‑solving unknown words. I regard that as slightly different to guessing.

Q251 Mr Gibb: I have seen children who have heard the story before and who memorise it. I remember seeing a girl reading and she said, "Winnie the Pooh ..." The word "Winnie" was not there at all. She was just making it up.

Dr Collins: And the text is inappropriately matched.

Q252 Mr Gibb: The story was right.

Dr Collins: Equally of course, you see children who decode accurately but have no understanding of the comprehension in terms of what they are reading. That is why the balance is so important.

Q253 Mr Gibb: Presumably you cannot comprehend until you can decode?

Dr Collins: Absolutely.

Q254 Mr Gibb: So the key thing is to get the decoding right first?

Dr Collins: And that is why our first structured approach to teaching reading must bring in phonics.

Q255 Mr Gibb: You are bringing in these texts too soon, are you not, because you are forcing children to do things that damage the way they should be learning to read because they are guessing too early. They are getting words that are too hard for their phonics knowledge and therefore they are learning to read in two different ways. One is context and guessing and pictures and the other is build up the word from the phonics.

Dr Collins: Controlling the reading environment of a child is a tricky business because there might be the odd book that you have control over but the truth is that children are active readers right across the curriculum and throughout their lives, and what you have to do is give them strategies that allow them to be engaged and positive about that approach and not think, "I can only when I read these little books and everything else I cannot read."

Q256 Mr Gibb: You talk about Playing with Sounds. Can you tell me in what way that is more impressive than the NLS Progression in Phonics programme?

Dr Collins: It takes the teaching earlier. It takes it much more into reception and even into nursery. It engages in a much more play‑based context and it accelerates the phonic learning. One of the things we have learnt (and it is one of the things you asked earlier we could have done differently) is that you can accelerate the phonics teaching if it is done in a fun and ambitious way that is play‑based. So it takes it very much into the early years context and accelerates the learning through games and through play, which has been very, very successful.

Q257 Mr Gibb: Playing with Sounds does not use the shape of the letter, does it, it just teaches the sound?

Dr Collins: It starts with phonic knowledge which is the phonemic, the hearing of the sounds. It moves on to recognition which does include the shape later on. Then it moves into the segmenting for spelling and the blending for reading. So it takes you through all the steps but absolutely starts with the sounds, you are right, which is where all phonics starts.

Q258 Chairman: Let's get the history of this in time. One small question still remains in my mind. In terms of the history of this development there used to be a great controversy about ITA, the Initial Teaching Alphabet. Where does that play in the scheme of things these days? I remember much criticism of Glenys Kinnock's role in ITA at one stage. Is this all dead and buried or is it still part of the pragmatic approach?

Dr Collins: You can dig it out of the long grass. It is pretty much there. The trouble with ITA and other similar approaches is you have to learn two things because you are learning a particular code, the ITA code, and that you have to then learn the English phonic code. What we agree absolutely on is let's teach them English phonics, let's teach phonics early because they can learn it, and you can then move on to the comprehension and the other deeper aspects of literacy.

Q259 Chairman: It was a fashion that is now out of date?

Dr Collins: Yes.

Chairman: Val, the last word to you.

Q260 Valerie Davey: Chairman, I think what we have we seen this morning is that this debate is very time consuming, and one of the things that happened when we brought in the national literacy structures and syllabus was we said to teachers, "Stop the debate let's get on and do something." I think that was really important. You are showing us this morning the depth of the background to it. Can I just ask you finally to link what you have just said about the strategy of teaching of young people with the earlier comments you made about boys' learning because I think that is where context is so important. My son was bored stiff with Janet and John. He did not want to learn to read. He would go to the library and he would pick out something about the solar system or whatever completely beyond his reading ability but that is the book he wanted to hold and to look at and to begin to take a few words out of. Is it not especially for boys that context is so important?

Dr Collins: Absolutely and this is why Playing with Sounds is important because it is play‑based. It is particularly important for boys because not only was phonics not taught consistently previously I do not think, it also was not taught well. It was a letter a week colouring everything that begins with P and actually that does not teach you a great deal about phonics. Exploring our sound letter system is particularly engaging for boys who prefer, for whatever reason, active learning in small groups and through play, which is exactly what Playing with Sounds does.

Mr McCully: I should say that it is really engaging and if the Committee would like to see copies of this I think you would find it fun as well. We would be delighted to give the Committee copies if you would be interested.

Chairman: We would like that. Any of you who did not have the opportunity to be at the IPPR seminar in Oxford on Friday and Saturday of last week which had some of the leading experts in terms of this whole range of areas, I really do recommend the papers that Kathy Silva and others were presenting. Can I thank you. We have had a lot of Jolly Phonics but I hope you have found jolly politics as well! Thank you for answering questions right across the range. Thank you, Minister, and thank you to your officials.