Reading (Hansard, 26 June 1997)

§ 10. Mr. Dismore
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans he has to help those pupils leaving primary school this summer who have fallen behind in their reading. [4099]

§ Mr. Byers
The Government launched a pilot of 29 literacy summer schools on 3 June for pupils leaving primary school this summer who have not reached level four in their national curriculum tests. Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced an expansion to the literacy summer schools to cover 50 schools and some 1,600 pupils.

§ Mr. Dismore
I am sure that many hon. Members share my experience; time and again constituents visit my surgery with problems that have become far worse because they cannot read and write and therefore cannot 978 understand the letters they receive from the local council, the Department of Social Security and, especially, the privatised utilities. That is the result of the previous Government's education policy, which turned out illiterate and semi-literate pupils from primary schools who had little chance of succeeding at secondary school. May I compliment my hon. Friend on the welcome and imaginative scheme he has just announced, which will go a long way towards achieving the Government's target of ensuring that, by 2002, 80 per cent. of 11-year-olds leaving primary school reach their proper reading age?

§ Mr. Byers
The literacy summer schools are an exciting initiative. They are part of a pilot scheme which we hope to expand in future years to cover thousands of young people and hundreds of schools. We recognise that a person's future will be blighted for ever if they cannot read. It is a fundamental issue that has to be tackled. We intend to do so.

§ Mr. Soames
I warmly welcome the hon. Gentleman's announcement, but he needs to use some cavalry dash. It is plain that the scheme will be a success, so why does he not expand it straight away? It does not need a pilot and should be implemented immediately on a much greater scale.

§ Mr. Byers
It is rather ironic that the hon. Gentleman should make that comment when the Government of which he was a member had only one programme for literacy—the reading recovery programme—which was scrapped two years ago. We have been in office for two months. The pilot programmes are exciting and we intend to expand them in future years. I hope that, in due course, we may be able to initiate one in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.