INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET (Hansard, 21 April 1967)

§ Mr. Richard Hornby (Tonbridge)

From the debate on Vietnam, we now move into rather calmer waters. I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House for the opportunity of raising the subject of the initial teaching alphabet. It is a subject which has been raised in the House on more than one occasion and in which the House has taken a considerable interest and has, by its own actions, made possible a certain amount of research into the subject. It is also a subject in which a former Member of the House has been a notable and energetic sponsor of this whole project and experiment. I refer, of course, to Sir James Pitman, who was fromerly the hon. Member for Bath.

It is not difficult to understand why the House and individual hon. Members have been interested in this subject. It is quite simply because everyone recognises the immense importance for a child of learning to read and, subsequently, for any adult of having been able to learn to read at a reasonably early age and to keep up with his or her generation. The child who has not learned to read by the time he or she passes from the infants' school to the junior school is, we all recognise, at a substantial disadvantage. The child who has had trouble with reading and is a backward reader when he or she leaves school is almost certain to gravitate to the ranks of the unskilled and to be deprived of a great many opportunities—and, I would say, to find life in the future even more difficult than has been the case in the past—as more and more opportunities for work lie in the ranks of the skilled.

There is no room for complacency about our achievements in teaching our children to read. It is estimated that 14 per cent, of school leavers leave school at the age of 15 as backward readers—that is to say, not having gone beyond the age of 11 in their reading ability. To take a rather gloomy social picture, United States statistics show that 90 per cent. of all those who are convicted of 1054 indictable offences come from the ranks of the backward readers. I make these points merely to stress that learning to read and the skills that we apply to that task are of immense importance to every individual child and to the country as a whole.

The initial teaching alphabet is a technique which has been developed as a means of trying to improve our methods of teaching children to read. Its proponents do not claim that it is necessarily the best that could ever be evolved. They claim that it merits serious consideration, and for that reason they have urged successfully the case for research into its results. It is for that same reason that they and I are now asking what we should do next. It is not only the zealots who have propounded the initial teaching alphabet who are now interested in what should happen next. It has, I think one can say by now, a very respectable and also quite lengthy pedigree. The question, after first being propounded by Sir James Pitman, was shown "interest and good will" by the then Minister of Education, Dame Florence Horsbrugh, as far back as 1953. It was nearly 10 years ago, 1958, when Sir James Pitman approached Dr. Wall, of the National Foundation for Educational Research, and Mr. Lionel Elvin, Director of the Institute of Education in London University, to ask that they should collaborate in tests to see if children could be helped to read more easily. It was as far back as 1960 that the reading research unit was established under Mr. John Downing and it was at that time, that particularly valuable support for the preparations and carrying out of research were promised and given by the then Minister of Education, now Lord Eccles, Sir William Alexander, of the Association of Education Committees, and by Sir Ronald Gould, of the National Union of Teachers.

I mention this simply to emphasise that it is not an experiment which has been carried out only by devoted individual enthusiasts in isolation from other educational bodies. It has, as I said earlier, a pretty long and pretty distinguished pedigree by now, and it should now, in 1967 be seriously considered.

The purpose of the research, if I may just remind the House, has been quite simple—to test the value of this initial teaching alphabet as a method of helping children to learn to read. The criteria 1055 for choosing it was that it seemed to have advantages or possible advantages over the traditional orthography and could therefore be a help in getting children over the initial hurdles; and, secondly, it was not so far removed from the traditional orthography as to present insurmountable difficulties when the time came to transfer back to the manner in which our literature is currently written.

There has not been a predisposition on behalf of the researchers concerned to presume or advocate a favourable outcome of the experiment. They have conducted this experiment as research workers to find out what the effects were, and they have done their level best to ensure that the research was fairly conducted. Very great care has been taken to try to get matching schools and matching groups of children so that one could test one's conclusions adequately. Very great care has been taken to see whether the argument commonly known as the Hawthorne Effect could adequately be taken account of; in other words, whether sufficient weight could be given to counteract the dangers of excessive enthusiasm arising out of the knowledge of participation in an experiment with the result that unreal results may emerge.

The experiment could not have gone forward without important financial backing, and one might mention the Ford Foundation, the Government themselves, and, of course, the generosity of Sir James Pitman and his firm, and also of other industrial backers who were interested in the possibilities.

As to the results of the research, which was conducted between 1961 and 1964 I want to give to the House only one set of figures, because I think it is better that the full score should be looked at in published evidence. The one figure I want to refer to seems to me to be an important one. It is that after 2⅓rd years in school, the period of the test, according to research, 78.1 per cent. of children had got beyond Book V in their reading with the Initial Teaching Alphabet, as compared with 37.8 per cent. getting beyond Book V in their reading under the traditional methods. In other words, the research shows that, in the tested schools, the Initial Teaching Alphabet has produced superior reading and spelling results after three years. 1056 That has been seen by tests of word recognition, by accuracy of reading and, to some extent, by tests on the speed of reading.

There is less evidence of a clear cut result in the comprehension of what is read, though, in any case, it is normal that, in the first two years of a child's learning to read, it is the mechanics of the business which are important, with comprehension tending to come later. It also appears to be the case that, the brighter the child, the easier he finds the transition. The results for the lowest ten per cent. are disappointing, particularly in the sense that these are the children with whom one is most concerned. That having been said, there does not appear to be anything harmful for this group in the I.T.A., as the results reveal.

There is, as the research shows, a problem of transition. There is a slowing down at the moment of moving from one method to the other, but it is not insurmountable, and the benefit of the I.T.A. over orthodox methods becomes apparent at a later stage.

As I said earlier, in pointing out the results of this research, no one is claiming that there may not be refinements and better methods of teaching to read. All that is said is that here is a method which has been tested and which appears to have produced some very promising results, and one which we ought to look at very seriously and consider whether and in what way we should advocate its wide use in the interests of children learning to read.

One comes, then, to what should be done now. Before I ask the hon. Lady what is the view of the Government, there are two points which should be made. The first is what is the attitude of parents, and the second is what is the attitude of teachers, because they are even more concerned than Government, as always, with the education of any child.

It is right to say that the tests reveal that there is no problem about parental attitudes to them, once the problems and proposals have been explained. If that is correct, it needs to be on the record.

In discussing a matter concerning educational methods, one needs to go out of one's way to say that educational methods are the province of the teacher and no one else, though naturally the 1057 teacher will consult and consider other viewpoints in arriving at his view.

Any head teacher is sovereign in his own school. That is right and proper and I hope that it will always be so. However, the fact remains that, like anyone else in any other job, head teachers sensibly look for advice about new ideas which may be developing and which may be of assistance to them. It is here that the Government's attitude becomes important, and one asks what is their attitude.

Hitherto, their attitude has been helpful. Through the action of this House, they have enabled money to go forward for this research project. They have given benevolent support to some of the experiments which have been carried out. However, these comes a moment when a decision has to be taken on that research, and the decision may be a positive or a negative one. One can take a deliberate action and say, "Yes; go ahead" or alternatively, "We believe that the right answer is 'no more'." One cannot research and research without wanting, sooner or later, to take a stand. I suspect that we have come pretty near to this point. As The Times Educational Supplement said the other day, this is not something to be pigeon-holed, and I suggest that the Government ought to hasten the report from the Schools Council which is assessing these results. It would be interesting to know when the report is likely to be published.

Secondly, the Government should give an active lead in encouraging a consideration of the results which have been well set out in the report of the symposium and other published material. They should be considered by Her Majesty's inspectors, by teachers in infant schools, and perhaps by parent-teacher associations, because head teachers have to make up their minds, whether, having looked at the evidence, they see this as a valuable instrument for teaching children to read.

I do not think that there are problems about publishers and the provision of books. Many titles, including a number of popular editions, are available in this series. There are no copyright problems and so the mechanics do not present any problem. The question really is whether, in the light of the evidence, the Government think it right to draw attention to the results, and to say that in the light 1058 of them this seems to be something which should now go further. I believe that this is the view of an increasing number of serious educationalists who first doubtingly, and then cautiously but more enthusiastically, came to see that the appalling problem of spelling, and ultimately of reading the English language, could be usefully simplified both for those who found English their mother tongue, here and in America, where other experiments are going on, and also perhaps those who had to grapple with English as a second language.

§ The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Shirley Williams)

I thank the hon. Member for Tonbridge (Mr. Hornby) for raising this subject of the Initial Teaching Alphabet, and for so fairly presenting the case and the difficulties that arise. I cannot better his account of the conclusions of the research which are published in the symposium to which he referred, so I shall not repeat what he said.

I begin by mentioning the position at which the hon. Gentleman started with regard to the extreme importance of children learning to read before leaving infants school. I agree with what the hon. Gentleman said, particularly about the continuing problem of a minority of children who, not having learned to read in infants school, often do not fully acquire normal reading standards during the rest of their school lives.

It is fair, however, on this matter, to quarrel slightly with the balance of the hon. Gentleman's argument and point to the work done and presented by the Department of Education and Science in a recent report on progress in reading which was used in the Plowden Report to show the remarkable increase in reading attainment in terms of age levels as between 1948 and about 15 years later. It is worth putting that on record, and as far as we can judge this increase in attainment is not due to any marked alterations in the method or the alphabet, but more to a general improvement in the standards of schools and among teachers.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the wider implications of the study which has been done by the Reading Research Unit of the Institute of Education on the I.T.A., because these wider implications suggest that it is the 1059 traditional orthography which stands in the way of a good deal of reading attainment, and associated with it is the peculiar nature of English spelling. The implications of the research probably go beyond the Initial Teaching Alphabet itself, important as that has been.

I echo what the hon. Gentleman said about the interesting results of the study which has been made. It should perhaps be said that it was a fairly limited study. It involved only 870 children in all, and it was a study which the researchers themselves made clear had to be given as an interim report. In other words, in the symposium the researchers said that they would not like to prejudge the ultimate attainment of the children within the I.T.A. group, but that what they were doing was to record a fairly striking advance at an early age after a short time, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said.

Clearly, however, there is enough to show that a further study of the I.T.A. in the classroom is well worth pursuing. I underline that, as the hon. Gentleman did. The Department of Education cannot tell, and nor would it wish to tell, local authorities and teachers what they should do in the classrooms. However, an evaluation is going on under Professor Frank Warburton of the University of Manchester. It was commissioned by the Schools Council originally at the request of the Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation. The report is expected in a few weeks and the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it is therefore a little difficult to go very far when we have an objective evaluation coming out in such a short time.

In addition, a further piece of work is going on which is very limited but which may be of some interest. It is a piece of research which has been organised by the Ministry of Health into the use of initial teaching alphabets as a teaching method for mentally deficient children. I might also mention the piece of research, now coming towards its end, into teaching methods with the initial teaching alphabet, research which is being conducted by someone originally commissioned from the Reading Research Unit of the Institute of Education.

In consequence, as the hon. Gentleman said, we now have several pieces of 1060 research culminating. One has already done so and two shortly will, and it is therefore a little difficult for me, speaking for the Department of Education, to prejudice what will be in these objective revaluations. I should also say that colleges of education are increasingly drawing the attention of students on primary and primary-secondary courses to the Initial Teaching Alphabet. Our information is that, generally speaking, this is done as part of the study course and that teaching materials are available. It is, therefore, very open to schools to consider whether this is a method which they wish to use. Our advice from Her Majesty's Inspectors is that what we now need is a good deal of classroom experience of the Initial Teaching Alphabet in order to get a basis on which the experiment can be widened year by year.

I think that it is worth pointing out that the Government sustained the Reading Research Unit team which worked on I.T.A.—the hon. Gentleman's Government and subsequently the present Government—to the very considerable extent of £17,800. I agree with him that the point has probably been reached, which was mentioned in the leader in The Times Educational Supplement, when research now have to move increasingly into classroom activity and classroom technique. For one thing, this would finally end the whole question of the effect of the enthusiasm of the researcher, because one would then be in a normal and not an abnormal situation. Secondly, it would mean that one would be able to make a much more straightforward and widespread comparison between one type of teaching to read and another.

There has not yet been adequate research into the whole process of learning how to read. This is not a matter about which we are particularly knowledgeable, and by "we" I mean the teaching profession. Further development of the Initial Teaching Alphabet is needed, and that might be said of one or two other attempts to ease learning in the context of a greater study of the whole process of learning how to read, so that we do not, as it were, leap into research of special fields without getting straight the context into which these special fields fall.

1061 The hon. Gentleman made the points which I would otherwise have made about the limits of the research so far, but—and here I echo what he said—I agree with him that there is clearly enough to warrant a very close further study 1062 and encouragement to teachers to consider using the Initial Teaching Alphabet in individual schools.