LITERACY

HL Deb 05 February 1975 vol 356 cc890-952

3.54 p.m.

Debate resumed.

Lord ALEXANDER of POTTERHILL

My Lords, I rise in the confidence that your Lordships show special sympathy and tolerance to those who speak for the first time in this House. I hope your tolerance will allow me to say a little on the immediate subject of the debate, and perhaps rather more on another problem concerning the education service, which to me is fundamental and is at the moment in danger.

The noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, adequately set out the symptoms of the disease. It is unusual for those of us engaged in the administration of education to discuss matters of curriculum at all. I first became a chief education officer 40 years ago, and at that time it was quite improper for us to presume to know anything about the curriculum and methods, even though we had all been teachers before we became administrators. At that time, we administered the Act of 1921 and under that Act the duty of a local education authority, and the duty of a parent, was to cause the child to receive efficient instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic. It was also the duty of the teacher. The training colleges, as they then were—now colleges of education—were completely conscious of that duty. They therefore devoted a very substantial portion of their time to training teachers to teach the three Rs, and in my judgment this was done very effectively.

What I believe has happened is that there has been a misinterpretation of the Education Act of 1944. It was manifestly right and proper, with the expected extension of the period of schooling and the intention of providing secondary education for all children, that the duty on a local education authority and on a parent should become wider than merely the three Rs. So we had the three As. The duty of an authority was to cause children to be educated according to their age, ability and aptitude—a very right and proper aim for secondary education—but it was not the intention that the three As should replace the three Rs and I fear there has been misinterpretation.

In the colleges, as the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, said, there has perhaps been a decreasing emphasis on training teachers to teach the three Rs. Indeed, I have heard the view expressed that it is old-fashioned, out of date, no longer the done thing. If you go to an infants' school now, you will see the most excellent examples of creative activity, but it is almost improper to ask if the children can read. There has been a change of attitude in the teaching profession and in the educational world. I think it was Annie Oakley who expressed the view that, You don't have to know how to read and write if you're out with a feller in the pale moonlight". And I have no doubt that that is true. My Lords, there are many things we can do naturally. But learning to read is not one of them and the opinion frequently expressed, that if children are left to get personal experience, to which the noble Lord referred, they will somehow come to learn to read, is manifest nonsense. It is simply untrue.

The need is for a change of attitude. I am profoundly grateful that the subject has been raised in this House, because it will draw it to attention. The need is for structured teaching in the infant schools of reading and subsequently. The noble Lord was very right in stressing that it is not enough to be able to read. I think that no student should go to a university without an intensive course in speed reading, and then he would probably more readily get through the work he has to do there. But, my Lords, education is not merely a means of instruction: it is a most important factor in social control. Those of us who watched the schools in Germany between 1933 and 1938 can be in no doubt of the validity of that statement.

I have spent 40 years in administration in the education service and I have come to have a deep faith in a basic principle, the principle of distribution of power in the administration of the education service, and I feel that there are dangers. If we look to the East, we see systems of education with a high degree of central control and direction, which I think must be accepted as effective instruments of instruction but in which freedom is minimal, if present at all. If we look to the West, we see systems of education with the minimum influence of Central Government and a great devolution of power, which undoubtedly provide a very high degree of freedom but in which educational opportunity is dependent on place of birth. It is one thing to be born in Alabama: it is a very different thing to be born in California.

My Lords, in this country for 70 years or more we have remained poised between these two extremes. We accept functions relating to education which are properly the responsibility of Central Government. I suggest that there are essentially three, apart from general legislation relating to the service. The first is to prescribe those things which must be common in all areas—the age at which children must go to school, the age at which they may leave and so on. The second is to prescribe minimum standards with which all authorities must comply, which is done in regulations relating to school buildings, frequency of schools being open and so on. The third is to provide financial support which corrects the impact of the relative wealth and poverty of different authorities, in order to make educational opportunity independent of place of birth.

These are the essential functions of Central Government. The local authorities are the necessary instrument for providing and administrating the service, providing buildings, equipment and employing the necessary personnel. The teaching profession has the responsibility of deciding what should be taught, how it should be taught and—perhaps most important—of seeking to ascertain the abilities and aptitudes of children in order to secure that these are developed as fully as possible after they have acquired the necessary tools to that end of the three Rs.

I fear there is a danger in the present situation. Let me make it clear that this is not because I think there is any question of deliberate policy on anybody's part to change the structure of the education which is the envy of the world. But there is a financial problem. The rate system is simply unable to cope with a highly inflationary situation. This is well known; the Layfield Committee has been set up to find an answer. We await that answer and it would be improper for me to make any detailed comment on that. My concern is simple. Whatever solution is found to the financial prob-lem—and the solution must be found— we must make certain that it does not impact fundamentally on the distribution of power in the education service of this country, which I believe is an essential factor in maintaining freedom. I am not posing a dilemma. I want our children to be literate, but I want them to be free. My Lords, I am most grateful for the sympathy of your attention.

4.12 p.m.

Lord GORDON-WALKER

My Lords, I can with absolute sincerity and, I am sure, with the agreement of your Lordships, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, on the ability, authority and fluency with which he has spoken. I greatly envied him when I thought of my own first maiden speech, which was in this House many years ago in 1945 when another place was sitting in your Lordships' Chamber. I also greatly admired the way he made such a cogent and logical speech to the House without using notes—something I have always wanted to do but have never trusted myself to try. Few people can speak with richer experience, knowledge and authority on any educational subject than the noble Lord, because of his lifelong devotion to the educational service. From time to time, he had difficult, intricate and controversial problems to solve, in regard to which anything he did was bound to create some controversy somewhere. I have always admired him for steering his way through, sticking to principle and being realistic, and also for the way he did so without forfeiting the friendship of the many people with whom he had to deal. Your Lordships listened with such great attention to the noble Lord that I know I am expressing your views when I say that we hope to hear him again often and before very long.

I must declare a rather remote interest in the subject that I am going to talk about. A good many years ago, I was concerned in an attempt to extend the use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet in our schools. This gave me some firsthand experience of the subject about which I want mainly to talk today. Two things especially impressed me as a result of my experience: first, the schools were and are still—as the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, pointed out—turning out an unacceptably high proportion of illiterates and near-illiterates and, subject to what the Bullock Report may say, the figure is probably round about 20 per cent., or more if you interpret literacy as a reasonable standard. The second thing I discovered is what a terrible thing illiteracy is in a literate society. It does not matter much about being illiterate in a society that cannot write, but it is a terrible thing to be illiterate in a society which is, in the main, literate.

This leads to many of the grave problems facing us today. Pupils who cannot keep up with or even understand what is going on in the classrooms in their schools, increasingly accept themselves as failures; they revolt in various ways and withdraw themselves in various ways from participation in the schools. I have no doubt that illiteracy is one of the main causes—not the only one, of course—of bad behaviour in school and truancy and violence both inside and outside school. The sense of resentment and failure that results from inability to read and, all the more, to write, continues after school as is shown, for example, by the appalling standard of illiteracy in our borstals. It is therefore extremely important to reduce the rate of illiteracy by all means possible.

One basic cause among the many with which your Lordships have dealt with great authority—and they must all be taken into account—which the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, also mentioned, is our orthodox alphabet which has the misfortune of having only 26 letters to represent the 44 sounds of the English language. In addition, for historical reasons, very many sounds are written in quite different and inconsistent ways. Altogether there are some 2,000 different characterisations of this kind in the English language. These factors put a formidable obstacle in the way of young children learning to read and write.

As the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, said, the Initial Teaching Alphabet was invented by Sir James Pitman to bring simplicity and consistency into English spelling for children who are first learning to read. I should like to elaborate a little on the remarks made on this subject by the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, with which I thoroughly agree. The basic principle of the Initial Teaching Alphabet is that it contains 44 letters to represent specifically and clearly the 44 sounds of our speech. The effort of learning 44 letters rather than 26—which is an effort, of course—is nothing like so great as learning the 2,000 different spellings involved if one uses the orthodox alphabet and spelling.

There is much evidence, on balance, that the use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet greatly improves the ability of young children to learn to read and write. Perhaps the most important evidence was the independent study carried out in 1969 for the Schools Council. One fact brought out in this Report—which I can confirm from my own experience— is how quickly children who used the Initial Teaching Alphabet learned to write creatively. After all, one teaches pupils to read in order to teach them to write. These children could instantly spell any word they could speak and which they knew.

One main argument advanced against the Initial Teaching Alphabet concerns what is called the "transition" from the Initial Teaching Alphabet to the ordinary orthodox alphabet. It is said that children must learn and then "unlearn" the Initial Teaching Alphabet, and then learn the ordinary alphabet. But considerable experience shows that it does not work that way. The transition is easy and natural. The main reason for that is that the letters in the Initial Teaching Alphabet are very closely similar to those in the orthodox alphabet. Children, it seems, regard the Initial Teaching Alphabet and the ordinary alphabet as similar forms of grown-up writing. As they become proficient, they scarcely notice the difference between the two alphabets. The Initial Teaching Alphabet can greatly aid in remedying illiteracy in adults, and I am very glad indeed about the grant which Her Majesty's Government are giving to help this cause.

One of the examples which illustrate the efficiency of the Initial Teaching Alphabet for adults is the school run by the Army, which teaches that Alphabet to soldiers who cannot read or write. I visited the school myself and can confirm the report that those running this school have had no failures in teaching men to read and write—men who went through our school system without being able to do either of these things. As a consequence, there was also a very great improvement in the self-confidence and morale of the men. Similar reports of success in the use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet have come from certain borstals.

My final point is that the system has had beneficial effects in teaching English to foreigners. I think there is perhaps a certain danger of English, as a world language, becoming something like Chinese; that is, a language which is written everywhere in the same manner, but pronounced so differently that people from different parts of China can communicate only in writing and not in speech. The same thing applies in India. I have seen people in Madras, for instance, finding it extremely difficult to communicate with people from Bengal. The same thing has also been observed in many parts of Africa. Experiments have been made in parts of Nigeria, and tests have established that the use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet improves pronunciation and helps to promote literacy in the English language. I think that the wider use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet in other countries could help to maintain and spread the use of English as a world language. For all these reasons, there seems to me to be a very strong case, if I may say so to my noble friend, for greater official support for the use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet in our own infant and junior schools, and in similar schools in other countries.

4.23 p.m.

Lord RENWICK

My Lords, I crave the indulgence of your Lordships in addressing the House for the first time. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for giving me this opportunity to speak today. I should like to approach this subject of the importance of literacy from the point of view of dyslexics. My justification is that literacy, like food, assumes a far greater importance to those who have not got it. The interest which I should like to declare is that one of my sons is a dyslexic. It is a fact of life that causes are pleaded more often by those who have a personal involvement; but dyslexia, or degrees of it, appear to be so widespread that I suggest we are all becoming involved. In no way do I want to be controversial in my maiden speech and I shall therefore confine my remarks to observations on the difficulties that afflict my son and others like him.

The ability to read and absorb information, and then to convey it, is the basis of civilised behaviour. It has long been fashionable to gauge intelligence by literacy. How very unfair that judgment is to a dyslexic. It seems that the inability to read causes emotional disturbances. These start, if I may take your Lordships back to your early schooldays, when one child out of a class of, say, 20 is unable to read aloud a sentence from a book, and everyone laughs at him. Soon that child will have been segregated from the class and made to read a simple childish book, while the others go on to more exciting and interesting stuff.

That lone child feels a sense of failure that I am sure has to be experienced to be understood. Children hate to be laughed at; they become aggressive or introvert. Children hate to be bored; they become disruptive in class. Having difficulty in reading, they become frustrated because their minds are crying out for new knowledge and new interest. In our society today the skill of literacy is required to provide these for them. They also fear to go to school, because sympathy, understanding and encouragement are so often sadly lacking. Please do not think, my Lords, that I am blaming teachers. Often a dyslexic is inattentive, finds it difficult to concentrate, holds back the more literate members of the class and is generally disruptive. Therefore there is probably even a sense of relief in the class when he plays truant.

Even in adulthood, a dyslexic has no easy time. It is not easy to find a worthwhile job which matches his or her intelligence, for a dyslexic can be very articulate and can come from any range of intelligence or background. Dyslexia is an invisible infirmity, and the stigma which society attaches to illiteracy is in no way alleviated by the sympathy and compassion so rightly shown to those who are more obviously handicapped. However, many dyslexics have overcome their difficulties, though they may never become wholly literate or find reading and writing to be the pleasure it is for so many. They have struggled to overcome the lack of this vital basic skill only, I am sure, through a determination and strength of character that is not given to us all. Some children have the benefit of remedial tuition, and so are able to take their place with confidence in a normal school among other children of their own age, knowing that their teacher will make small allowances for them and encourage them with praise when it is appreciated that an enormous effort has been made to complete written work, however untidy, which would have been simple to others.

Among those who seem to be overcoming this disability I am happy to include my son. He has suffered most of the early frustrations and the sense of failure that I have described, and has shown many of the emotional disturbances. But at the age of six he was fortunate in having a concerned mother and an understanding doctor, who together—not without some difficulty, because of his young age—worked to have his condition assessed and provided remedial tuition in addition to his normal schooling. Now, two and a half years later, with remedial tuition provided only once a week, he is far better adjusted. He is happier at school among boys of his own age, and though of course there will be difficulties ahead he understands his disability and, I am sure, will overcome it. He will have his mother and his doctor to thank for the perseverance they showed in those early months to obtain the best advice and help. He will also thank his first headmistress for spotting his problem so early, and his remedial teachers for many painstaking hours.

My Lords, this House, too, would be thanked in the same way by many thousands of children throughout the country if in some way it could encourage teachers, education authorities, psychologists, neurologists, doctors, remedial teachers and parents all to work together to identify the problem in young children, to find ways of giving remedial tuition, to change slightly the traditional teaching techniques and to give the understanding and encouragement necessary so that they too can enjoy at least some of the advantages of literacy.

4.31 p.m.

Lady KINLOSS

My Lords, it is my pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, on his informative and very interesting maiden speech, and to hope that the House will hear him again many times. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, on his speech. We hope also to hear him again soon. I join with other Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Maybray-King for having initiated the debate. The noble Lord is, I believe, the only Doctor of Philosophy to have graced the Speaker's Chair in the other place and he is also among the very small number of former headmasters to sit in your Lordships' House. He has brought to this debate special qualifications, knowledge and experience. I have listened with fascination and the deepest interest to what was a very persuasive speech and I have tried hard to think how or by whom he could be opposed. I have been able to think of only two examples. The first—and I imagine that he could have been found a place among the official Opposition had he not lived before Parliament existed— was the Caliph Haroun Al Rashchid, who observed that, Writing is an occupation only for slaves. I think my noble friend Lord Maybray-King would soon make mincemeat of that thesis.

My other candidate as an opposition speaker—and this time he comes from the Whig Benches—is the late noble Lord, the sixth Lord Byron, the poet. He wrote of the forebears of some of us: And 'tis some praise in peers to write at all. I know that the noble Lord's descendent, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, is to speak later in the debate and I hope that he may be able to join with me in acquitting the present Members of your Lordships' House of any inadequacy in that respect. I venture to think that that thesis likewise could easily be demolished.

My Lords, I do not wish to weary your Lordships by discussing further any of the matters that noble Lords have already raised. Rather, what I have to say is by way of a postscript and. as noble Lords will recollect, it was Sir Richard Steele who said: A Woman seldom Writes her Mind but in her Postscript. I believe that illiteracy presents a grave problem for a few, and we are often concerned with minorities. Not so long ago, a schoolteacher who taught all three of my children gave up ordinary teaching to devote herself to remedial teaching. After qualifying, her first assignment was to a hospital to teach the rudiments of reading to a woman who was on a kidney machine, so that she could use the machine in her own home. Some weeks passed, but little or no progress was made by the patient, despite all the efforts of the instructress. The instructress then tactfully asked the patient whether it would be possible for her husband to read the instructions on the machine to her. The patient replied: "I'm afraid he can't do that because, although he became a sergeant in the Army, he can't read either." I was distressed and shocked by this incident, for here was a case where the patient could have been in her own home surroundings and have her family around her, but was prevented from this by her inability to acquire the skill of reading. However, it must be said that the Government provided her with every facility to learn the skill of reading and, likewise, that in the Army her husband would have had the opportunity to learn also.

My Lords, I was told recently by a retired Army officer, with considerable experience in these matters, that he was once faced with an illiterate recruit to whom he offered, as tactfully as he could, a course which could help him overcome his difficulty. The young man replied: "Thank you, Sir, but I am sorry, it would be no good." The officer asked him why and the young man replied: "You see, my father can't read either." In short, the young man was firmly convinced that illiteracy is hereditary. On this occasion, there again was every facility for remedial treatment and, indeed, also for the services of an Army psychiatrist.

My Lords, I read with care the Report of the Department of Education and Science, Children with Special Reading Difficulties, 1972. It is perhaps somewhat wider in scope than its title implies: it also considers illiterate and semiliterate adults, including children who have left school without having learnt the skill of reading. The recommendations of the Report, so far as they went seem wise and sensible. It is surely best, from the point of view of the children affected, if their problems can be dealt with in an ordinary school to which the other children in the neighbourhood will in most cases be going and send to remedial education centres only those children who are not amenable to the special treatment that the school itself is able to provide.

However, reflecting on the Report, it occurs to me that it contains one extraordinary omission, so remarkable that I wonder how it came about. The Report discusses the difficulties of the children and the functions of teachers, educational psychologists, school medical officers and even psychiatrists in relation to the children affected. It recommends additional remedial education centres where these do not exist. But nowhere does it make any mention of parents of the children. I am not a teacher or a psychologist, still less a doctor or a psychiatrist, but wherever a child is in any difficulty I should have thought that the first thing to do was to inquire into the home circumstances and to enlist the active co-operation of the parents. It seems to me quite idle to expend public money on additional remedial education centres if what would cost absolutely nothing—the interest and active co-operation of the parents—is not secured. It may be that some schools and some remedial education centres do co-operate with parents, and, of course, I should be glad to be told by the noble Lord, Lord Crowther-Hunt, who will reply to the debate, that they do do so. Nevertheless, the matter is not mentioned in the Report, as I feel it should have been. I hope very much that, if necessary, the noble Lord will draw the Minister's attention to this.

My Lords, more than 20 years ago, when I first went to what is now Tanzania, the greatest proportion of the population was wholly illiterate. Of course, the problem there was wholly different from our present one here, but, even so, I think that we may be able to learn something from it, for today the population of Tanzania is very much more literate than it then was. I regret that I cannot give the precise figures What I recollect from the early 1950s was the enthusiasm of the late Lord Twining, who was then Governor, and the vigour with which the literacy courses were conducted in quite difficult surroundings, in villages and small towns—a movement which was taken up with the greatest enthusiasm when Tanzania became independent. There was a problem of illiterate voters when elections were introduced in the late 1950s—a problem which I imagine has now largely been overcome, from all I have heard. The problem of an illiterate voter is a very real one indeed: an illiterate, whether he be on a kidney machine, in an army or at the ballot box is a disadvantaged citizen. He is also disadvantaged because, as I have suggested, it is due to his own psychological difficulties that he is precluded from sharing in all we derive from the skill of reading and writing.

My Lords, writing is, of course, far less important than reading, but it is needed, none the less, for full enjoyment of what the late Pope John XXIII spoke of as the "banquet of life". What the late Lord Twining did was to generate enthusiasm, and it is truly this that it can be said my noble friend Lord Maybray-King has done in this debate. As we have heard, there is much that is already being done in the matter: it can be only to the good if this debate can assist the Government to fresh enthusiasm. I am sure this is what the noble Lord who is to reply would wish.

4.40 p.m.

The Earl of RADNOR

My Lords, I, too, must ask your Lordships' indulgence since this is the first time that I have spoken before you. I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for bringing up the whole subject of literacy. With its connotations of enthusiasm, to talk of literacy is better than illiteracy, which might have been rather depressing and perhaps would not have led towards solutions to the slightly illiterate situation in our population.

In the sophisticated society that exists today, it is hard to over-emphasise the importance of being literate. Children who have a language difficulty at school and who fail to read and write properly are at an obvious disadvantage when they come to seek employment. They are a disappointment to themselves, to their parents and probably to their teachers as well, and they are not truly able to pull their full weight in the community. What is more so far as I am concerned, at the very beginning they have probably lost one of the major enjoyments of life and are often bound to an existence which to them and to others as well is more than unsatisfactory.

They have, as the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, has already said, an invisible disability, and in my brief experience of reading their letters and talking to them (and I heard the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, say it) are almost invariably ashamed of their predicament, which is sad in itself. Since their predicament is not observable and cannot be seen, they elicit little sympathy, and if it is discovered among the general population they arc probably taken to be just stupid—which, indeed, to be truthful, a proportion of them are, but not that many. It is the ones who are not literate and who are not stupid either who should perhaps particularly concern us today.

I have no particular knowledge of illiteracy in all the various forms it takes —these probably range from stupidity, which I have already mentoned, through a large range of conditions, some very distressing indeed. I should, however, like to follow the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, and speak about dyslexia. At this stage I should, in accordance with your Lordships' practice, declare a dual interest because I am Chairman of the British Dyslexia Association and President of the Dyslexia Institute in Surrey. I feel in speaking about dyslexia that it is an area which perhaps, if it was dealt with, could have a good impact on the future literacy of our population.

Your Lordships know only too well that dyslexia went on the Statute Book in 1972, when local authorities were encouraged (if that is the right word) to deal with this condition or disability in their various geographical areas. Your Lordships will also know that dyslexia is a language disability which leads to faulty reading, writing and spelling. It is, in fact, a kind of under-performance in the person who suffers from the disability. A person suffering from dyslexia is, more often than not, of high intelligence but one whose language capability, with all that this means, lags behind. At the present time many such children are just taken as dull. They may well be sat at the back of the class literally to idle their time through their statutory school career, and, almost inevitably, they take one of two courses; they either retire within themselves and opt out of the race altogether or become frustrated and aggressive. If your Lordships will put yourselves in their position—a high intelligence but unable to keep up in reading and writing—you will appreciate that frustration must indeed be there. I am sure you can imagine it. It is worth noting that the link between dyslexia and delinquency is a strong and real one.

The incidence of this disability is a little difficult to quantify. I believe that if anyone ever had quantified it a lot more would have been done about it. But it is variously estimated as affecting between 4 and 11 per cent. of our school population. Some of your Lordships might say that that is a guess. I thought it might be of interest to say that a week ago yester-day a short television programme on dyslexia was shown at a non-peak viewing hour, 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I was unfortunately unable to see it myself. As a result of that programme the British Dyslexia Association has received 903 letters on the subject from people who feel that this area of education is not working for them.

It might be useful to cast our minds back to 1970 when the Bill for the chronically disabled and sick was passing through your Lordships' Chamber. At that time, a number of noble Lords ex-pressed misgivings about certain clauses in the Bill because they felt they were too permissive and were not mandatory. Clause 27, to do with dyslexia, was one of those clauses. It seems that in the event those noble Lords who had these misgivings have turned out to be correct. Your Lordships will know that in the Act local authorities are asked, or have a duty, to inform the Minister of the provisions they are making for the alleviation of dyslexia; and they are asked to pro-vide proper facilities for the dyslexic "so far as is practicable". We are in the year 1975 and to all intents and purposes local education authorities have not found it practicable to conform to this directive. The special teaching that is required for the dyslexic is not available by and large. Nor are the facilities for diagnosis and assessment. As a result, a considerable number of young people will go, or run the risk of going, through life illiterate and failing to fulfil their full potential, either to their own satisfaction or to the benefit of the country as a whole.

I feel it important in this debate to try to take a positive rather than a negative line. If we feel that these dyslexic people should be brought into the fold of literacy, action should be taken now because so far as dyslexia is concerned we are still at square one. It would seem important, if not imperative, that consideration should be given to the starting of courses in teacher training colleges so that a nucleus of teachers can be built up with the special skills needed to teach the dyslexic child or, for that matter, adult. I think there would be a need too—and it is worth thinking of—for in-service teacher training because this would be an integral part of teaching teachers who were then going to teach the dyslexics. Important, too, would be to think of the early identification of these children in school, since if they are discovered early enough they can be taught in groups, and if they are discovered too late there are problems with the teacher/pupil ratio. Also, it is important to think a little about research into dyslexia. For my part, I would look at research into teaching techniques to get over this known bottleneck of the bad dyslexic of 1:1 teaching, which is obviously a practical difficulty. Some dyslexics are taught in groups in some places now. As I say, I for my money would want to look into this matter a little more closely.

Our ultimate aim must surely be to have a teacher in every sizeable school who is trained and skilled to teach the dyslexic child. So long as we avoid teaching this disability in the way that it should be taught, we shall have a body of adult illiterates among us. We cannot afford to treat people in that way— so to speak, to throw people of good intelligence on the rubbish heap.

I have spoken for eleven minutes, which slightly amazes me. Sometimes it is customary in a maiden speech to think of an apt quotation. Mine comes only too easily, because in a broad sense it is the crux of the whole matter. It comes from the Children's Charter of the United Nations which states: A child who is educationally handicapped shall receive the special education treatment or care required by his particular condition. This is just what the dyslexics in this country are not getting at the moment, and until they do they will not be able to add themselves to our literate population.

4.51 p.m.

Baroness MASHAM of ILTON

My Lords, I should first like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for instigating this most important debate and for his wonderful speech. It is a privilege today for me to speak after the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, and to congratulate him and the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, on their most humane maiden speeches. This is a historic day in your Lordships' House, because two noble Lords have made their maiden speeches on dyslexia. I am sure that their gesture and personal experience will give encouragement to many parents throughout the country who have children who are suffering from this condition. I also look forward to hearing the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, because he, too, has personal experience of dyslexia.

The importance of literacy is in being able to keep up with education through school, to be able to select the job of one's choice, to read a newspaper, to fill in forms such as income tax and driving licence forms, or to write out a receipt. If a standard is not reached which enables one to do this, then there will be frustration. There seem to be many reasons why people cannot read or write. One of the commonest causes of illiteracy must be the lack of instruction. This accounts for millions of people in underdeveloped countries who cannot read or write. However, it should not apply to a sophisticated community like Britain.

There are some children who have inadequate intellectual calibre, which makes it difficult for them to acquire the art of reading, writing and arithmetic. This inadequacy is often incorrectly dismissed as being due to laziness, inattention or day dreaming. There are others who have "minimal brain damage". Some children fall behind in their learning, due to defects in hearing-loss or visual impairment which are not detected until the child goes to school. Even then they are often missed. There seems to be a need for a follow-up of children who miss the inspection of the school health service. There are children who have a severe emotional upset which puts them back. This happened to the eldest son of my husband's cousin who was killed in Northern Ireland. At the age of seven he was making good progress at school, but with the shock of his father's death he could no longer read. Broken homes, unsatisfactory home conditions and incompatibility with a teacher can also play their part.

Perhaps today one of the factors in being behind with learning is truancy in our schools. There is a group of children who have great difficulty in learning to read and to spell. These children have already been mentioned by the noble Earl and the noble Lord who have made their maiden speeches today, and they are the children who are suffering from developmental dyslexia. The neurologists think that the reason may be a delayed maturation of that part of the brain which is concerned with learning the conventional meaning of graphic symbols, and also the correlation of the sound of a word with its visual appearance in print. Boys are involved at least four times as much as girls, but the reasons for developmental dyslexia still seem to be vague. To me it appears vital that more research in this field is done.

I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister and your Lordships today the abysmal lack of diagnosing and understanding this condition in the North of England. The Dyslexic Society has not so far spread North. I speak now with a personal interest, because my husband and I have a son with developmental dyslexia. Since I had heard about dyslexia when I was working on the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Bill in 1970, I suspected this condition in our son when he showed great signs of frustration after being at school for two years, and I took him to our general practitioner who told me that there was no such condition. I insisted upon taking him to a paediatrician, but this I had to do privately. As a supporter of the National Health Service, this was against what I considered should be necessary. The paediatrician diagnosed cross laterality and suspected dyslexia and he arranged for our boy to see an educational psychologist, who found him to have an IQ of 126, but he was behind in learning by two years. But because the educational psychologist's report did not mention dyslexia and the high IQ, the school cannot understand the slow progress. Again, privately I arranged for a remedial teacher to give lessons in the summer holidays, but I could not find one who was trained in treating dyslexic children.

In our local education authority there seems to be no organised remedial department. There is no doubt in my mind when I say that there must be a need for some teachers to recognise and understand this problem. As our boy goes up the school, his obvious need to shine in some aspect of school life is paramount. At the moment he excels at fighting in the playground. Is it surprising that parents become worried? To get our son fully assessed, I had to take him to a neurologist in London, again privately. Unless a disability is defined, it is impossible to accept and treat a condition, and this has been adequately stressed today by the two noble Lords.

While visiting a school which is attended by the daughter of a friend, I was told by one of the teachers that the girl was emotionally disturbed and could not read, because her father was a Member of Parliament and her parents were away from home so much. It was not until she was taken to an eye surgeon to have her eyes tested that he diagnosed dyslexia. This was at the age of 11. There is a lady who lives in the Wetherby area of Yorkshire. She went to our local borstal which has an excellent remedial department, and implored them to take her dyslexic daughter for remedial teaching. The borstal is frightened to do this, as it might open a floodgate of children who are in need of remedial teaching. Also, problems might arise from sending such children to borstal for classes. But I hope that that illustrates to your Lordships the real desperation that the parents of these children are in. Dyslexic children need both their confidence and general knowledge to be built up. Does the Minister think there should be research into the use of audio aids?

At the borstal to which I am attached, the excellent remedial work done there has the most beneficial effect on boys. Some boys cannot read, write or tell the time on reception, but in only a few months they make remarkable progress and for this they are very grateful. I hope that in the future more will be done to improve basic teacher training courses, and there should be a built-in ability to recognise these problems. This point has already been stressed by several noble Lords. There seems to be a great need to attract the remedial teachers to primary schools. If the prevention of retardation in the early years could be concentrated on, so much expense and frustration could be eliminated in later life.

5.1 p.m.

Earl FERRERS

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for introducing this debate because it has certainly highlighted many important issues. I hesitated to take part because so many knowledgeable people are speaking in this debate and education is certainly not an issue to which I would normally wish to contribute. But I have always felt that illiteracy stems from one of three causes: the first is if a child is inadequately taught; the second is the unwillingness to learn, and the third is the inability to comprehend. If I were—indeed I may be —illiterate, it would be because of the second reason, the unwillingness to learn. I wish to concentrate on the third reason, the inability to comprehend.

I felt constrained to take part in this debate because of the experience I have had of this matter and because of the complete loneliness and isolation in which a parent or parents can find themselves when they realise that they have a child with a learning problem. I shall be on an entirely narrow point this afternoon, and I hope your Lordships will forgive me for being thoroughly boring and pedantic in merely reciting my own experiences, but there is a reason behind it.

We have a child who has always had difficulty in reasoning; in reading, in writing and in calculating—money, figures, mean almost nothing to her. But in many other respects she is entirely— to use a most objectionable word—integrated. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, said that what we need is better diagnosis. My noble friend Lord Radnor, in an excellent maiden speech, said that what we need is earlier diagnosis. Of course both are entirely right, but how do we do it? We realised that there was a problem when the child was eight and we did not know what to do. We approached the local authority and a child psychiatrist came to see the child. I am always fearful of so-called "experts". However, he did various tests and then he said that it was necessary to take our daughter to a hospital to have an encephalographic test. She went to a clinically frightening-looking place where she was met by a whole lot of people wearing white coats. She then had something put on her head, which so terrified her that she was immediately sick. At the end of all this we were told that anyhow the results had not come out properly because the operator who normally did the test was on holiday and it had been done by an inexperienced person.

The child psychiatrist then took us on one side and said, "You have got to realise that you have a child who is very backward and the best thing for her is to send her to a school for educationally subnormal children". We considered this. We wished to be open-minded and we decided that if this was the case we should follow the expert's advice. We went to see the school, and the children there were quite clearly physically and mentally retarded. In our view it was a situation which would have been wholly unsuitable for our child and with the best will in the world considered that the advice we were given by the expert was bad advice. We did not take it.

Fortunately, at that school there was a master who was extremely good at dealing with these problems. He always said that it did not interest him why a child wanted to learn, but why a child did not want to learn, and he gave our child private lessons twice a week. Indeed, he has become our guide, philosopher and friend as to what to do about the child's progress. He told us quite clearly that she does not fit into any simple category, such as being a spastic or a dyslectic, or any neat compartment but that she has reasoning problems. He is a sound man and the tragedy was that he was moved to Bedford to teach immigrant children who are coming into this country and who are unable to speak English. He has to teach them to speak English, which is of course a great gain for those who are being taught but a great loss to those who have children with remedial problems.

We felt then that the great problem was what kind of a school to send the child to. In fact she went to a convent where the headmistress said, "Let us see if we can help". This has been a great success and has helped her both socially and academically. But, of course, as I think my noble friend Lord Radnor said, it is far too easy for a child to sit at the back of a room and, like a wireless set, switch off. Then idleness and laziness become confused with backwardness, and these children are sufficiently crafty to know when they need to make an effort.

We then took her to a paediatrician who said, "The best thing to do is to go to a psychologist in London". This we did, like my noble friend Lady Masham, at great expense, and he again said that the child fitted into no neat compartment. He said: "What you must do is to send her to a school where she can develop all her other capabilities and progress as she is doing. You are doing the best that you can". It was comforting advice but it was not constructive.

Some five years ago we thought that we must make another effort and we took her to another paediatrician who was a friend of mine. We said, "We have a problem here, can you help us? "He said, "Yes", and he put us in touch with some other experts. More tests were done and they came to the conclusion that we wanted a certain type of school, one that would build on security, bring her on as a child, develop her natural talents, develop her personality and give her something to work for, but also individual help. Academic schools have no place for the backward; those schools that cater for backward children very often cater for the very backward. So we said, "Where do we find these schools?" And the answer was, "We do not know". So again we were up against the difficulty of what to do.

Through all these years the child has grown delightfully and charmingly and socially, and as a proper member of society, yet she still has these learning problems, and as an individual one just says, "Where do I turn for guidance?" At last we have found a school which we think may help, although it remains to be seen. It is new; it is only two years old and has all the problems associated with newness and novelty. But the philosophy there is that with some children there are learning blockages in reading, writing, calculating and reasoning. Too often in our educational system the IQ tests and others show a child as either above a line, or below it. If the child is above a line, it can go to a normal school; if below a line it is classified as educationally subnormal and relegated to a school where it will mix with those who are mentally deformed or deranged.

The philosophy at this school is that the child may not be educationally subnormal, but merely may have difficulties in reasoning and writing. They want to try to find out why the child has these difficulties, what they are, and they try to find ways of circumscribing them. One child in this school came to it as an awkward and frustrated child. It was a very difficult child. Eventually, they discovered that this child had no idea about time; it could not tell the time. At the previous school, the child had perpetually been late for everything, and was perpetually castigated for being late, but the poor child literally did not understand what it had done wrong, because it could not understand the clock. When this was found to be the problem, the child relaxed entirely and has now become a very different child indeed. But the difficulty was to find out what was the problem. When that child arrived at the school, they said it was a broken child, but now it has become a fine member of the school.

My Lords, this is the first school that I have found where they try to tackle the problem that children who have IQs below the appropriate level need not be educationally subnormal. It is a new venture, and exceedingly expensive. It is a gamble. I went to my local authority to ask them, as they did not have such facilities in their own area, whether they would be prepared to make a grant towards this. After yet another visit by a psychiatrist, I had a letter which said, "We cannot recommend our authority to make a grant". I am sure that there are excel-lent reasons for this. The noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, in his most excellent maiden speech, referred to the particular problem of lack of cash.

Much has been said recently about helping children with learning difficulties. We think we are making tremendous progress. I dare say that the noble Lord, Lord Crowther-Hunt, may say that a great deal is being done now, but my experience is that if you have a child with learning difficulties, you are on your own, both financially and from the point of view of seeking help. Where do you go? If you go to a local authority, they will say, "The educationally subnormal school would have been the best school for that child". But it would have been the wrong place. I can understand what the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, meant when he said that after a television programme his Society received 900 letters. It is precisely this point that they are dealing with. People do not know who to go to for help. If one asks, "Who are the experts?", and if you are not careful, you will trail your child from doctor to doctor trying to find someone to help, which in turn gives the child a multiplicity of hangups of a totally different nature from the original problem.

When people talk about private education being wrong, one wonders whether they have ever thought this thing through. Is it wrong to deny the child remedial help of a specialised nature if it is avail-able? If it is wrong, local authorities must share the burden of the responsibility. If local authorities are not prepared to shoulder this responsibility, children with this kind of problem will be subjected to a system wholly wrong and totally unsuited to their needs. My own modest experience in this sphere makes me wonder how many children there are who are being? subjected to a totally wrong kind of treatment and education.

My Lords, I nearly did not take part in this debate, because one has a natural reluctance and hesitation in parading in front of others one's own personal problems and experience, even to such an understanding audience as your Lord-ships. But I decided to do so, for I feel that in this specific area of education one is moving very much in uncharted waters. There must be many who have similar experiences to those of mine, and who have not had the privilege of drawing the problems to the attention of those who may be in a position to do some-thing. It is a twilight area of education; twilight because it is difficult to pinpoint the problem—each child is different. It is twilight because once you are in it, you cannot see which way to go; you grope around looking for a light, with the horrible realisation that, in the end, you are on your own.

5.15 p.m.

The Earl of LYTTON

My Lords, I have been sitting as a kind of sandwich between one maiden speaker on my left and two on my right. I have listened with great pleasure to the sonorous brain power of the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, on my left, and the expressions from the heart the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, and the noble Earl, Lord Radnor. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, not only for having been the master of ceremonies of this debate, but for having said—if I heard it correctly—that I illuminate the subject whenever I join in a debate. The noble Lord has no idea of the balm that is to my soul, because normally people refer to my calligraphy and say, "Can't you get your letters typed?". So for once to be chosen for a talent which illuminates instead of one which obscures makes me feel very happy.

My Lords, in this debate I may be a voice of darkness instead of illumination, because I propose to put forward a few of the conclusions I have come to during 20 years of teaching all sorts of subjects to a variety of people, most of them between the ages of 18 and 19, a few between the ages of 11 and 14, and all of them males. What observations I put forward may have more of a bearing on adult education than anything else.

I have myself questioned whether literacy in the sense of being able to read should receive such exclusive emphasis. I have been in the forefront of the battle. At one time I taught classes of 54. I have set the papers and corrected them, with the exception of the final examination. I was so determined to teach people well a subject which was unpopular with them that I gave up my prospects of advancement in the Army in order to study the people better. I am very bad at remembering names. The noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, may remember that he met me today in the Princes' Chamber with my guests. I was unable to introduce my guests because for the moment I had forgotten their names.

Having regard to this difficulty, when I started to teach I made a special study of how to learn people's names, and it was successful. This is something which is ignored by most teachers, yet is vital. When I had developed my maximum capacity, I could learn 50 names in 50 minutes. A fortnight after the beginning of the term at Sandhurst, I could address 600 cadets by their names, and after that first fortnight I never made a mistake.

I studied these people. I taught them a variety of things. Economics was what I was supposed to teach them, but sometimes I played three cadets a day at squash and other things of that kind. I found you could control people and interest them if you knew them and they knew you. When I arrived for the first term a cadet said, "What are you teaching, Sir?" "Economics", I said. He said, "We had a bonfire last term and the fuel was the textbook for economics". So it was not popular. But I did get hold of them. I reduced the syllabus. I think that is important; we teach people far too much. I controlled the examiner; I insisted that the examination papers should be submitted to me so that they were not asked questions which were not on the syllabus. Naturally, I did not tell anybody, and in any case I could not have told all 200.

By degrees it worked. People used to flock into my room, particularly towards the end of the term, in the evenings; at 10.30 I used to have to say, "I cannot keep you up all night", and 30 or 40 of them went out of the door, but they came voluntarily. You have to take people as they are. I have trained people to run, to box, to swim, to play squash up to army championship standards. I have reached that standard in some of those activities but not in all; I was quite willing to teach things about which I knew nothing, because I knew something about other things, and they took the rest for granted.

When one is training athletes they become stale. I remember a student who slept in the front row, not because I was boring; I can assure your Lordships that for a time I could hold an audience, and I was not boring even on a dull subject. But this fellow slept, and I could see that he had done too much. It was a hot summer afternoon. He had been drilling. He was not of very robust physique. He slept and I did not wake him. At the end of the term he came to me and said, "Sir, your subject disturbs me, it keeps me awake at night". Of course, one would not give the obvious retort, and I did not; one did not want to humiliate the man. I said, "Come round and see us", and we did things together. Then he produced difficulties in other subjects, and most of the difficulties were what Lord Maybray-King is talking about, but I used the word "articulate".

I think men are human beings, they want to express themselves in a variety of ways. Some will not read, but they are very good with their legs, or they can punch like nothing on earth, or they can shoot. I have taught people up to Bisley standards. After all, I belong to a regiment one of the battalions of which won the Army championship every year between the wars. Teaching people to shoot is a marvellous education in articulation and the use of language. Therefore, I am not a specialist on reading. And, of course, I have taught people in Africa; I have taught people who were not only illiterate but who would remain illiterate all their lives; but there are many things one can teach them, and what highly intelligent people some of them are.

I have been boasting about my capacity to learn about people by making the effort, but I started by saying I had no natural talent. I am going on to say that I go to see what others do. For instance, I went to present the prizes at a school in Bermondsey where I used to run a club just before the Second World War. I asked the headmistress, "You have got about 600. Do you know the names of everybody?" "Yes, of course", she said, "a lot more than that. I have to know not only the names of the children. I have to know their fathers and their mothers and I have to know their homes". I said, "Why do you have to know all this?" She said, "The powers that be have prescribed that the 11-plus must go, and, of course, we have to distinguish in some other way. Here is a colossal form I have to fill in which requires an immense amount of know-ledge that no married teacher could possibly acquire. I have to say which are suitable for the 'A' stream and the 'B' stream". That was the language used; I do not know whether it still is used.

The headmistress said, "I have to go to see them at home. If the television is never turned off, I cannot put them into the 'A' stream, whatever their talents, because they will never do any homework. If they are banished to a bedroom or provided with a bedroom without heating, then I cannot put them in the 'A' stream. I have to know everything. "She was controlling a school of 600. She said, "I do not think an ordinary married teacher with the ties of life, the shopping and everything else, could do this. I can, but I can only just do it. If the numbers go up to 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, how on earth can anybody do it, no matter what efforts they make". I want to emphasise knowing the children; I hear of teachers who do not know a single name. I can find out by asking the children, "Does he know you?" When the teacher knows them they say, "Yes, he knows everybody". If you do not know people, how can you teach your sheep, how can you control?

There is one other remark I want to make. As a farmer, as a teacher, I notice the inherent flaw in nature. We read about the balance of nature, natural selection, the struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest. Almost all that is true except the last conclusion. If nature has its way the survival of the un-fittest is what happens, in agriculture, docks, nettles, thistles, brambles, every other kind of thing. No garden ever prospered or produced a crop unless there was a gardener. Natural selection is a recipe for world starvation. The same tendencies exist in human nature, and this is a deeply ingrained flaw; the propensity to retrogress is very deep and it has to be controlled. When the creature is young it requires discipline. I think it is a mistake to have the discipline by itself. One must have it in everything that is done, in the subjects, whether it is rifle-shooting, squash racquets, rugby football, soccer, hockey, gymnastics, drill: in teaching anything there is a discipline. In all that, the man who has the command of language—whether it is English, Scots or pigeon-Swahili, which I used to use—conveys ideas; they learn and grow with you. My Lords, I have spoken too much.

5.28 p.m.

Viscount BARRINGTON

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said that he has spoken too much. I do not think I shall be accused of speaking too little if I try to confine the few remarks I want to make to a very few minutes. I had intended, when I put my name down, to make a few remarks about the three Rs in case nobody else did. So many of those remarks have been made so much better that I will confine what I say to the three Ms, which to me are at the moment more interesting. I have not often been at a debate when one has had the privilege of congratulating three maiden speakers who have made three maiden speeches, each of which would have made a debate in itself, and with every word of each one I never disa-greed, though I tried hard. It is a truism to say that in your Lordships' House there is always somebody who can intro-duce a subject probably better than could be done anywhere else.

I thought before coming here tonight, and I still thought after hearing his admirable opening speech, that there was nobody so well suited to speak on this subject than the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King. But having heard these three maiden speeches I am not quite so sure. I do not want to say much about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill; it would be impertinent of me. He was a chief education officer. I have never been anything in education except a very amateur private. I have occasionally been asked to teach children who were backward in reading, and I can quote the case of two very intelligent boys who could not read at the age of eight. As has emerged from this debate, one has to use quite different methods with different people. I was asked to take one of the boys, who happened to be my sister's son, for reading for five minutes every day in the summer holidays. The first day I took him for five minutes with a book which I thought he would enjoy. He got me into conversation for four minutes and had only one minute of reading. The second day I produced a stop watch and pointed out that it would be five minutes of reading. By the end of a quarter of an hour he was rather bored but had done his five minutes' reading. By the third day he was sufficiently interested in the book to spend the rest of the holidays reading comics and various other things practically without stopping. That was a very easy case of trying a little elementary discipline. Clearly, if one did not have the privilege of having one boy alone one would have had to go much further than that.

The other boy probably suffered from what has been referred to as the "mirror image". He could not distinguish clearly which way "p" was written. There again it was much easier, being alone with somebody to find some method, with or without the use of mirrors, by moving things to different parts of the room. It may have been by accident, but by the end of the holidays he could read easily and has not suffered since. I am not suggesting that these were methods which could be used in a school of 1,000 people or even in a class of 20, but it demonstrated what the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, was saying, that this is un-charted territory and each child has to be treated differently.

I know of a school in Hampshire which is run privately by somebody who has no paper qualifications. She started it after the war entirely on her own and had a number of pupils who had been given up in reading anywhere else. They were children of all classes and all ranges of intelligence. A well known girls' school, the Godolphin School in Salisbury, said that no children had been better taught. I do not know the secret except that she could teach remarkably well and above all was devoted to children and took a great interest in them.

Coming to the second maiden speech, I hope that nobody in this House will be offended if I say that I have never heard a maiden speech which moved me quite so much as that of the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, who was talking about his son. He mentioned the matter of illiteracy in the modern world as opposed to illiteracy in the days of Homer (who I suppose was illiterate) or in the Middle Ages when one had to be a clerk in a very special class to be literate. As he said, illiteracy nowadays is regarded as a stigma of shame. A child who cannot read feels that he is despised and rejected. The noble Lord made that very clear in his speech. Without wanting to be sentimental, I do not know whether he is a musician and whether he knows the aria in "The Messiah" about another Son who "was despised and rejected", and the fact that Handel, who knew what he was doing, put that sentence into a major key. The noble Lord in his speech made the same point, also in a major key— he made this sound a subject of hope. But although it can be done and will be done do not let us fool ourselves into thinking that it can be done easily. The third maiden speech was so authoritative on the subject of dyslectics, which is clearly going to be a growing problem to which we do not yet know the answer, that I will not say anything except that I shall read it with immense care. I hope that all three maiden speakers today will speak as often as I come to this House.

My Lords, at this stage of the evening I cannot say anything very useful about the subject of literacy except that I agree that it is important. I believe that, like everything else that is important, it is also dangerous—like electricity or fire or any-thing to which we are all accustomed and cannot do without. It is something that we have to be very careful about. Several noble Lords have hinted that possibly the importance that we attach to literacy as opposed to intelligence and some other things is slightly exaggerated. Literature and literacy mean looking at a thing and hearing a thing. Homer, as I said, was probably illiterate, but people had wonderful memories in those days, just as children who cannot read may remember sounds better than children who can. Equally, children who cannot read may remember sights. But the difficulty with literacy is that "words" have to be looked at and also heard, and there is the triple problem of putting all three together.

I know very little about the initial spelling method which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, but I agree that spelling in England is a very difficult problem. If you have to explain to a foreigner, "We shall plough through the trough of despond however tough the going" and explain that "through" and "trough" and "plough" all look the same but sound different, he will end by saying, "Enough said", and no more on that matter. I think it would be a great pity if, as Bernard Shaw wanted, the whole of English spelling were reformed simply on scientific grounds; because there is something in looking at words which helps one to see the history in them. If one takes the word "encourage", one can see the word "cour" for "heart" in the middle of it. If it was spelt "inkurrij" it would become a different word whether one likes it or not. However, I think this half-way house of introducing an alphabet which is partly phonetic, leading one on to the old spelling, is probably an excellent one. There is this danger in literature of people believing that because they can read and write they can understand; because of course, much the most important thing is to be able to under-stand words as well as hearing and seeing them.

I have spoken much longer than I meant to. I do not want to be discouraging. I remember a Bishop in former years who was asked by his wife at breakfast on a rather busy day what he thought about sin, and his answer was, "I'm against it". If I were asked by the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, what I think about literacy, I would say, "I am for it."

5.39 p.m.

Lord SUDELEY

My Lords, the subject of this debate is the importance of literacy, and I have anticipated that much would be said about its benefits. Be these as they may, I should like to concentrate on the dangers of literacy in the shape of its inevitable consequence of higher and further education, which the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, who introduced the debate, termed "higher literacy". The point here, which was slightly touched upon a moment ago by the noble Viscount, Lord Barrington, who so wisely hinted that education could be slightly different from understanding, seems to me to be: once further educated do we think any better or any worse than if we scarcely read at all? For my own part, being not so much a reader of books as an observer of life, it seems to me that much further education can anaesthetise many of our better minds and destroy much of our capacity to think at all.

I am not facetious when I declare that it is my sincere opinion that the kind of people who best keep their wits about them are often those of little literacy or further education. A man in the pub put the matter to me very well the other day, when he said: When a miner reads a book he does not believe what it says. Any ass can see that the miner is right and the book is wrong. Among other such wise people on whom books or further education have had little effect, I remember the Irish lady who cooks my breakfast, a devout Catholic who scarcely reads the newspapers or, if she does, does not believe what they say. Other women with whom I have chatted behind shop counters, members of the regiment with whom I played polo in India—all excellent people—have a better idea of how to think than many of the dons at our redbrick universities.

As to the other kinds of thinking derived from books and too much education, much of this springs from the French philosophes who created the French Revolution and much of the Left-Wing thinking that has existed since then; a style of thinking which, given the chance, would subvert the basis of heredity within the House itself. A notable exponent of this kind of thinking was Voltaire who, in his novel Candide—a poor attempt to show that the omnipotent Deity is not kind—had to resort to the dishonest technique of packing his cards. Voltaire filled his novel with a series of events which succeeded one another with a rapidity which no sensible person could suppose would ever happen in the ordinary course of life. All sensible people also know perfectly well that such a presentation of events simply will not do.

I have noted in Who's Who that the noble Lord who introduced the debate has published some selections from Macaulay, much of whose thinking was derived from the French philosophes and projected by the same dishonest technique as Voltaire used of packing in his cards. It is in this way that we get so much wrong information in Macaulay's, History of England. For instance, there is the implication that the squire in the reign of Charles II, because he was a Tory in his politics and therefore averse to progress, was an ignorant being; or that as England became richer it became a better place in which to live. As to the purely political lies of Macaulay, I should like to refer to Leopold von Ranke's, History of England principally in the 17th Century, written especially to rebut Macaulay's point of view. As for the dishonesty of the whole of Macaulay's approach in every way, I should like to refer to the controversy in the Edinburgh Review in about 1830 between Macaulay and Michael Thomas Sadler, then a Member in another place, who had more honesty and certainly more sense than Macaulay ever had.

The Liberals of the last century promoted this fraudulent style of thinking of Macaulay and Voltaire, giving to it the name "education", which they said was necessary for all citizens who would have the responsibility of the vote and all citizens should have votes. In consequence, we have had more false thinking —that is to say, education—promoted in the London School of Economics by poisonous influences abroad, until many people are saying, "We have had too much education and the time has come when we ought to go back to the fundamentals"; and the most fundamental aspect of our lives is our social relation-ships with which politics should be principally concerned.

I should like to demonstrate how, in the twin areas of our social relationships and politics—which should depend on them—we have been led astray by so much false thinking in books and newspapers which a literate electorate has been trained to read. At the risk, I am afraid a grave one, of being too tedious and of going on too long, I should like to draw up a random list of fourteen different words and phrases which seem to me to indicate the chief areas of deceptive thinking in books and newspapers which I might criticise.

No. 1, "controversial" or "provocative" are used as adjectives to condemn an idea or suggestion without sufficient reason. If I drive a Minister too hard on some point over which in advance he has made up his mind not to give way, he dives under cover by saying that my suggestion is too controversial. No. 2, "democracy", indicates a dynastic conviction of the virtue of majority rule. What then can be wrong with Royal dynasties? I can speak so of democracy, because as an hereditary Peer I owe my position to the fact that we are blessed still with a mixed Constitution which combines hereditary just as much as elected elements.

No. 3, "equality", may exist in the sight of God but down here on earth it cannot do so, even between spouses, the truth being that in physique and intelligence we are not equal, nor can we be so in terms of our social relationships, determined as these are by mutual dependence in which one Party exercises authority over the other, and yet in the exercise of that authority serves the other party, as Kings used to be the servants of their own people.

Related to the fallacy of equality is the fallacy of meritocracy, which I have been told is an organisation of society which comes into being through neighbours existing in a state of equality, so that rather than co-operate in the spirit of mutual dependence which I have already defined they can compete with one another. If for a moment I can leave aside the economic consideration that efficiency may be promoted by such com-petition, I should like to put forward the human equation that once one English-man competes against his neighbour, which Englishman knows who is his neighbour whom he can trust and with whom he can co-operate?

The fallacy of equality may be linked to another Liberal fraud, that of fraternity. I should like to consider the conjunction in connection with charity defined by my kinsman, Sir Robert Atkyns, author in the reign of Queen Anne of the definitive history of my ancestral county of Gloucester, as the life of religion, the true visible Church, the duty of mankind, the essential quality of a minister without which all his other qualities are dross. Charity among neighbours is something about which Liberals are quite blind, given as they are to Calvin's notion that a man who cannot work shall not eat, and on that account put into its place the fraudulent substitute of fraternity among neighbours —fraudulent, I say, because in the same breath Liberals declare that any two neighbours are not dependent upon one another as any man must be who under-takes to be his own brother's keeper. Liberals adjudicate instead that as equals neighbours must compete with one another.

No. 4 "everyone is entitled to his own opinion". The derivation of this remark, which has become jargon at cocktail parties, from Rousseau's "Social Contract" is clear. It is a formula produced to avoid a row. Between spouses who enjoy the most essential of social ties, because they are wholly committed to one another, but rows cannot be avoided and it may be said of such rows that their very existence denotes commitment, but it is not appreciated by the competitive middle-class now going under that we are all committed to one another. Therefore, it is emphatically not true to say that everyone is entitled to his own opinion.

In connection with the fallacy that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, I should like to mention the myth of impartiality, notably implied in the BBC Charter and more aptly conveyed in the letter columns of The Times than in those of the Daily Telegraph. If I asked any man to define "impartiality", it would be impossible for him to do so. Like the authors of the letters to the Daily Telegraph, we are all partis pris and so depend not upon ourselves— because, as I have just said, we are not entitled to our own opinion; we depend instead on our relationships to other people. In connection with the fallacy that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, I should also like to mention another fallacy, occasionally invoked by the Left-Wing intelligentsia in aid of its own cause, that of world opinion, for the phrase "world opinion" begs the question: who has his own personal opinion which he has the arrogance and, I suspect, the dishonesty to presume is that of the entire world?

No. 5, "Facts". Facts are merely the cards which Voltaire and Macaulay used to pack their books with. Both authors knew that the point of facts is merely the attitude which one chooses to take towards them, and that everything depends on how they are arranged. Politicians can pull the wool over our eyes by quoting facts as if they possess some inherent value. Over a glass of sherry the other day in the St. James's Club, a Member of the other place told me that the economic fact of the matter is that men will not work unless the threat of unemployment is exercised over them. The better truth of the matter is that we are all concerned to look after our own families and, if this is impossible, we are entitled to ask, what is the point of the economy?

No. 6, "Intelligent". This is used as an adjective to sanctify an idea: it does not imply that the idea is sensible. Many intellectuals are people of no common sense. They are often very stupid.

No. 7, "Liberal". This is usually taken to mean "with good intent", whereas it more often means" with false or insufficient intent". The good intent may be false because of the traditional alliance of liberal philosophy with the selfish motivation of moneymaking; or insufficient, because the liberal values denote a code of morality unsupported by religion and no morality can survive or flourish unless it is supported by religion.

No. 8, "Liberty". This is taken to mean that we can dispense with some of the rules, whereas we all know that freedom can exist only within them. No. 9, "Making your way". This is a current phrase implying that, in one's determination to get on, one is entitled to damage society as a taker, compared with a hereditary Peer who gives service in its most traditional form. If a woman made her own way as a married woman or a prostitute, Hollywood would say she was a flyer.

No. 10, "Power". The word is used in books and newspapers to denote something evil. It led Lord Acton to declare, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." However, if that dictum were true, where could the power of good lie? It may be objected that Lord Acton was thinking only in terms of politics. But De Tocqueville declared in the Ancien Régime that no State can hold together without religion. Therefore, no politician can talk about power without considering its religious connotations. Once religion is brought in, power ceases to be a dirty word and becomes a clean one.

No. 11, "Progress". This means that if we change the laws and institutions under which we live we shall get a better society. This ignores the teaching of the Church, flatly denied by Locke, that we are all creatures of original sin, and that therefore the sin which we have all inherited is something which no legislator can eradicate. For the sake of the fallacy of progress, anything like a House of Lords of hereditary Peers, evolved, historically speaking, on a prescriptive basis, is written off as an anachronism. The reversal of such a prescriptive basis of things—which is the only way, as the best answers are reached by practice— is called in aid for the sake of change. Change is something which, for entirely doctrinaire reasons best known to themselves—and certainly unknown to others —the Socialist intelligentsia likes to look upon as good in itself. Such change is carried out in the name of improvement, but the word "improvement" is merely a label stamped on political change to give it political justification. Harold Macmillan once said with some flippancy: "It is surprising how the most progressive countries are the most retrogressive."

No. 12, "Racial prejudice". This is a beautiful twister, prejudice merely being a pejorative term for strong feelings. If it is wrong to mix two races together because they are incompatible, then the feeling against carrying out any such experiment is entirely justified. No. 13, "Rational". This implies a sense of responsibility to reason. Why, like the French Revolutionaries, should we make a deity out of reason when it is the Almighty we should believe in?

Lastly, No. 14, "Rights". These are regarded by everyone as something to cherish and take care of, not only in relation to property—noble Lords opposite would have enough to say about absolute rights in property—but also in such quite elusive abstractions as happiness. The noble Earl, Lord Arran, once wanted to introduce a debate in your Lordships' House on this subject but was told, "Happiness is not a Government responsibility". Though happiness may be an elusive bird, many people like to think of it as a private right which they claim for themselves, but we were not born always to be happy. We should forget about rights appertaining just to ourselves, and concern ourselves with the duties and obligations out of which the whole of society is constructed.

My Lords, the list that I have drawn up is spasmodic and, I know, far too long, but I should like to close simply with the following observation. Literacy has created the existence of many students who have further education at their red-brick universities, and it is sad that the youth of England should in this way have become brainwashed by so much twisted thinking. Of the students, many of the men should be sent into the Army and the women ought to get married.

Viscount BARRINGTON

My Lords, the noble Lord remarked that charity was a quality that Liberals were blind to. May I say how heartily I agree with his use of a preposition at the end of a sentence—a practice I was always told was illiterate? He is entirely right to use it. There are excellent examples, such as The heartaches, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to", and, Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and there are many others. I agree with the noble Lord's grammar, but not always with his sentiments.

5.58 p.m.

Lord DOUGLAS of BARLOCH

My Lords, I shall not follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Sudeley, in introducing matters which are quite apart from the subject we are discussing All I would say about the noble Lord is that he appears to think that the evils which he complains of in this world are due to literacy, but, if people were unable to read, would they be any wiser if their only sources of information were the television and the radio? It might be a worse predicament.

My Lords, we have been discussing literacy and it is very important, because this is the accumulation of knowledge from all the centuries which is put at our disposal by the written and printed word. Learning to read and write—and to speak grammatically and logically—are arts which have to be acquired by diligence and application, and I venture to think that in recent times this has not been observed. Many years ago, I was familiar with education in Scotland and at that time (in the early years of this century) there was no child who came from the infant school into the elementary school who was not able to read and write—apart, of course, from the children who were mentally defective and who required to be in special schools.

At that time, the ordinary child in Scotland came into the elementary school from the infant school with a command of reading and writing that accorded with the ability that one would possess at that age. This was accomplished under a system in which the classes were two or three times as large as they are at the present time. It no doubt involved a great deal of effort on the part of the teachers, but it was done then and it ought to be done at the present time. We have been getting into the habit of assuming that learning to read and write is something which can be picked up almost accidentally without application on the part either of the teacher or the pupil. We have also been adopting a system, strange to say, of teaching the art of reading by means of what is called the "look and say" method in which the child is asked to look at a word and pronounce it without being taught how it is composed and what are the sounds of the various letters. In other words, we have been teaching the art of reading English. English is, after all, a phonetic language despite its eccentricities; we have been teaching it as if it was Chinese, in which people learn to recognise symbols.

It is no wonder that there have been a great many children who have not been able to read and to write properly. A teacher whom I know went into a school some years ago, examined the books of the children, and found that they had never been corrected. One child had 50 mistakes upon a page, which no doubt he went on repeating time after time. It is an abuse of the art of teaching, and more discipline and more application is required if reading is to be taught; it must be taught in conjunction with writing and speaking because the three things go together, and one reinforces the other.

6.1 p.m.

Lord ELTON

My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for introducing a subject of such great importance and so fundamental to the progress of this country. He apologised at the outset if his remarks were too narrow, but in fact he covered Asia and South America, and he also brought his remarks home. Like him, I regret the fact that the Bullock Report is not available. Certainly the printers' strike has had something to do with it but, as an ex-pupil of the Chairman of that Committee, I can say that the immense reading list which he will have given to his fellow members will also have been a contributory factor.

Before I turn to the body of what I have to say, I should like to give my most sincere, and not merely my formal, congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, and the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, on their constructive, lucid and most elegantly and soundly presented maiden speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, reminded us that the three As are no substitute for the three Rs, and I endorse this. He said that the need for structured teaching persists, and this I shall dilate upon, and he wisely advised us to avoid the dangers of the centralisation of power of direction in our educational system.

The noble Lord, Lord Renwick, and the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, in moving speeches, joined what developed throughout the debate into what I might almost call the dyslexia lobby. It is a notable development that so many of your Lordships should have such close connection with people who have recently been diagnosed as suffering from what until recently was not a recognised disease or condition at all. I should like to emphasise what they have said later on in what I have to say.

May I now return to the beginning of our theme, which is the theme of literacy, and its opposite, illiteracy. It is accepted, and I will not now produce the statistics which I had prepared in case this was in question, that two to three million adult illiterates exist in Britain at this moment, and this was acknowledged by the Minister in another place in Hansard on 27th January. The implications of this are alarming for a number of reasons. Let us look at it from the personal point of view first of all. I do not think that even I, who practised as a teacher for some time, had realised the shock or the difference between literacy and illiteracy until I found myself in the Northern Province of Thailand, totally unable to read anything in view—unable to distinguish a bus stop from a public house, as it were, with the additional difficulty of not speaking the local language.

This is not quite so extreme for those who have the beginnings of reading and speak our language; but none the less those who are "functionally illiterate" —to use a UNESCO term, which has changed its definition, I think, over the last few years, but is broadly said to mean having a reading age below that of an average 13 year old; and in the case of the British Association of Settlements Survey actually a nine-year old base was used—have closed to them all clerical careers and virtually every sedentary occupation. Those on the lower range find a promotion bar within their careers even in not very ambitious channels of employment. For some, invoices, labels, delivery notes, envelopes, street names, maps, timetables, instruction manuals—one could go on forever— are inscrutable, or can only be translated, rather than read, with infinite pains.

This affects of course national productivity as well as the careers of the individuals concerned. But there are effects also of another nature, and in the British Association of Settlements' publication A Right to Read, which one or two noble Lords have referred to already, the FORCAST system of judging age range, which is a test, I understand, used in the United States Army—though I have been unable to validate its accuracy, it is widely accepted—was applied to a number of documents and publications. The first was the label on a potentially dangerous bottle of household cleanser and it was discovered that the instructions for use, the caution about its dangers to children, and the instructions on what to do if children drank it, needed a reading age of over 16 years to be understood. That means that the instructions would have been unintelligible, presumably, to an admitted two or three million of our adult, and presumably in some cases, parent population. This is a matter for some alarm.

My Lords, a more extreme example, referred to briefly by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, who exhibited such an extreme literacy himself as to be able to say, "e.g.—I mean i.e."— which, I think, must be an all-time high— was the Department of Health and Social Security leaflet Family Income Supplement No. 1, on claiming the supplement. The bit of that which told you how to claim the money, as he rightly observed, required you to be 17 years old, whereas to read an article on the front page of The Times requires only an age of 14 years. I submit in all seriousness, although this may be an amusing example, that the first positive action to result from this debate ought to be a a careful scrutiny by every Department— and especially the Department of Health and Social Security, which is in closest contact with the disadvantaged and therefore usually, by inference, the least literate in many cases—of every document, pamphlet and publication addressed to the general public. When they have been scrutinised and assessed for comprehensibility they should, where necessary, be rewritten. That instructions to those in need on how to obtain help should be much more difficult to understand—three years more difficult to understand—than material published on the front page of The Times is, in my view, utterly absurd.

It is a symptom of the degradation of the English language about which I should like to dilate at length, but upon which I shall dilate only briefly. We have creeping into our systems, administrative and educative, a degradation of the English language which started with jargon (jargon which was rightly assaulted by Quiller-Couch in manuals which our civil servants seem, most regrettably, to have abandoned); a species of specialist language bred by ignorance out of conceit. Jargon is the series of platforms upon which those with modest specialist skills seek to elevate themselves above those without them, and is fabricated out of unnecessarily long words into unnecessarily long sentences. Jargon says, "The vehicular circulation has been severely restricted throughout the metropolis during the past 12 hours", where English says; "London is one big traffic jam today". Both sentences mean the same thing. The function of both sentences is to communicate, but only one of those does it to the fullest extent.

My Lords, reading backwardness in schools, which is what in fact prevents many people reading the forms about which I complain, has been the subject of much interesting research—particularly the National Child Development Study Report. There are in fact two of them— the first and second reports on the 1958 Cohort. This endorses the method used by Dr. Morris—to whom the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, referred—in another work relating the stage of progress in a child's reading to the volume of the reading primer in use. It is a simple rule of thumb, but not to be cast lightly aside. It is endorsed by those with great authority. The general rule is that if the child is on Book 2 or Book 3, it still needs a considerable amount of expert help and individual supervision and encouragement. From Book 4 onwards, the child is, to some extent, if given sufficient encouragement and suitable material, self-advancing—but, obviously, not entirely so.

Of a sample of 10,596 boys and girls, apparently without statistical bias, 471 per cent. were on Book 3 or below on the eve of their transfer from infant to junior school. In addition, the Report states, 10 per cent. of seven year olds in the final term of infant school had barely made a start with reading; that is, one in 10. The Report continues: It follows, given the present age of transfer, that teachers in charge of first-year junior classes should have a thorough knowledge of methods of teaching reading. The noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, gave us the figure for those in secondary schools who needed further teaching and reading as well.

If I may quote also from the Report on the 1968 Literacy Survey, Summary Interim Results of the Study of Pupils' Reading Standards; Proposals for Further Action, of the Inner London Education Authority, it says, in part, that … it emerges that in 68 per cent. (that is three out of five) of all junior schools and sections there are neither full-time nor part-time teachers who have been specifically trained to teach reading. This is in talking about the primary sector. I will not plunge the House into a sea of statistics; but it must be accepted that, if there is a 10 per cent. rate of infants hardly making a start on reading when they join their infant schools, if we have the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, has given at the entry to the secondary sector, if we have 2 million to 3 million adult illiterates in our population after that, there must be a considerable if dwindling proportion of backward readers throughout the educational system, infant, junior, middle and secondary and even, perhaps, into the sixth form colleges in a rather more specialist band.

It follows, therefore, that we must do something about remedying the situation. On the 21st November last year, I had occasion to ask the Government in a question supplementary to a Question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, whether they were satisfied with the apparent total lack of an accepted standard of training (or, apparently, of any requirement by ATOs) that students receiving teacher training certificates should be adequately trained to teach reading. I suggested— and I repeat this suggestion in the strongest possible terms—that all teachers should be trained to identify pupils with specific reading difficulties. The importance of this has been underscored again and again in this debate by speakers with personal experience of the difficulties, of the isolation, the loneliness and the bafflement which surround first the child and then the parent who cannot go for diagnosis and advice. I hope that the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, will take this as a message from the whole House that this is something that must be done.

I submit with equal emphasis that students who are training—for the whole and not simply the infant departments of primary sectors—should not be certificated as proficient if not both trained and competent to teach children to read and write, not by a couple of lectures in minority time but, effectively, thoroughly and with proven success. This will resolve the problem of the supply of properly-trained new teachers in time; but it will not resolve the problem of teachers who are now practising, but not adequately trained. I would endorse appeals to Her Majesty's Government to do their utmost to implement the existing recommendations for increasing in-service training as quickly as possible, and to give priority to this sphere in precedence before others. To reinforce what I have said, the ILEA Report, while saying that it cannot precisely state the number, concludes that: … the proportion of full-time teachers trained to teach reading [in their area] is less than 1:8. That starkly surprising statement must speak for itself.

Of other contributory factors, a major one is the lack of teaching continuity. The value of knowing a child has been most eloquently and amusingly put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. I can emphasise it only in a more pedestrian way. In the ILEA—and this is not a problem peculiar to them and I do not wish to be thought to be shooting at a particular area; there are other examples—of schools with one to four classes in 1967-68, over half had one to two teachers leaving. If one relates the two figures, that is a very large pro-portion of the staff. In fact, 14.8 per cent. (about one-seventh) had three or more leaving. In schools with one to four classes that means three-quarters of, or possibly all, the staff in some unfortunate schools. In schools of nine or more classes, 62.5 per cent. had three or more teachers leaving. I do not doubt that there are later figures; and I hope that we may be reassured by them.

This is not just a London problem; it is one associated with the great conurbations. I quote: One-half of the West Riding teachers had been there for five years or longer [in the schools in which they are teaching] but only one-quarter of those in Deptford or Birming-ham. This is shown in EPA Problems and Policies Report published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office in 1972. Why is it that the teachers are leaving? And why, as they leave by the door are the truants leaving over the wall? Or simply staying away? An ILEA survey carried out in 1971 estimated that about 6,000 secondary pupils (or 3 per cent. of the secondary school population) were away for "unauthorised or unknown reasons" at any one time.

My Lords, something is very wrong when both the teachers and the children are so unhappy to be in the schools that they get out of them in such numbers so fast without learning to read. This is not just a London problem. The Secretary of the National Association of Chief Welfare Officers, quoted in a recent publication, estimated that early in 1973, 420,000 children might be truant at any one time throughout the country. The Kingston-upon-Hull Head Teachers' Association Survey in 1971–72, revealed a 13.6 per cent. absentee rate for children aged 13–16"— and concluded— that well over half the absences were avoidable. The contributory factors to truancy have been pointed out correctly as boredom, and disruption springing from indiscipline. Size in a school, beyond a certain point, militates against efficiency. It may produce admirable resources for a sixth form and inexhaustible combinations of subjects in CSE, "O" and "A" level courses; but it also produces anonymity. Most teachers do not have the enormous capacity for identification that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has revealed. I intend after this debate to go to him for tuition in the manner of memorising names and places.

These schools may produce this variety of choices but they are also of a size to produce anonymity. Some 60 per cent. of school children do not take the CSE or "O" or "A" level courses at all. They do not get the sixth form advantages. They do not get the advantages of a wide choice of subjects. What they do get very often is anonymity. I have taught in a large school, not one of these great "crowd factories", as I call them, but a very big school. I had 302 children to deal with every seven days. I found that I recognised those who were very clever and very naughty or very stupid. Of the rest, all I could cope with administratively were the exercise books at night. I could meet them in the corridor and recognise the outstanding ones; the others I would not recognise. If they were going off to the "gym" or behind the lavatories for a smoke or down to the town to look at the shops, I would not know. I did not know them as individuals. Those who are anonymous are difficult to control, and difficult to account for—and what is more, it is impossible to accord to them the fundamental ingredient of a happy childhood and a secure adolescence (and this is terribly important): affectionate concern. What we want are schools for individuals, not factories for crowds.

My Lords, I will not go on about truancy. It is a major factor. I will say simply that it is made much easier not only because of the size of the institutions but also because of split sites and large catchment areas, where the individual truant will not be recognised by the local population. Incidentally, with the abandonment of school uniforms—which is a red herring I do not want to raise— identification of the truant is more difficult as well.

This is the last thing I want to say. It is a cruel fact which must not be over-looked. Where the discipline situation is critical, or has broken down or is thought to be about to break down, there are some absences of trouble-makers that are actually welcomed, and teachers do not bother to find out if there is laryngitis or measles in the family because they get the others taught better. I will pass briefly over that and revert to staff departures, because this is the other half of lack of continuity. The Report, Educational Priority, E.P.A. Problems and Policies, to which I have earlier referred, revealed in a survey that of the teachers questioned a majority, in some cases a large majority, (teachers in the E.P.A., of course) thought that their friends of the same age, with the same qualifications, in other occupations had more social prestige, more social stimulation, worked in a better neighbourhood under better physical conditions and under less pressure of work, for better pay throughout their careers. Significantly, 59 per cent. reckoned that teaching gave them more job satisfaction than the people they were comparing themselves with. In those circumstances, 59 per cent. when they see other people working in preferable conditions is a very small percentage for, in other words, 41 per cent. of the people who felt themselves to be occupationally disadvantaged also felt that they were not getting any satisfaction out of their job. It therefore gives me great pleasure to welcome the implications of the Houghton Report, which will put right at least one of the crudest dissatisfactions.

I must now congratulate, from the depths of my being, those who remain in the schools, in the difficult areas; who have stuck to their guns year by year. These are heroes, allowing themselves to be worn away in a vast expenditure of spirit on behalf of and in the service of thousands of children who perhaps only later in life, but more probably never, will recognise that it was on their shoulders that they stepped out into the world.

I think I have said enough to show that I do not single the ILEA out as a special target, and I will therefore pass over further statistics. I would, however, refer to one which is revealed in the ILEA 203 Literacy Survey 1971 follow-up, which I imagine the noble Lord is familiar with. I shall refer to an abridged extract from it. In 1968 the poor readers were "at least two years behind" the mean and in 1971, much later, they were "at least two years six months behind" the national mean. So we are not looking at a static situation but at a deteriorating situation. That there is considerable weakness in the teaching of reading in schools is I think now proven. It is a part, and a measurable part, of the shortcomings of our present educational system. Since it is measureable, let it be measured. We ought to know, year by year, whether we are giving our rising generation more literacy or less.

The fashionable fear of examinations and tests is, I believe, on the wane. I am not speaking of selection; I am speaking of assessment. We test the weight of our children's bodies to guard against malnutrition. Why should we not test their classroom attainments to guard against maleducation not for selection, but to monitor the progress and the service they are receiving? Literarcy is the principal learning tool of the modern child. Numeracy is another. If we deny them to children at the outset we starve them as surely as we starve their bodies if we do not give them food. It is increasingly hard to make up ground lost as the years roll by. Progress must be assessed and it must be set against a standard from which both the school and the individual teacher can see whether they are doing the job right. It is perverse, just because we do not accept payment by results, to ignore results altogether. So, my Lords, if we are to stop producing more and more adult illiterates we must take certain steps now and certain steps as soon as possible. These are: First, to see that students training to teach in all sectors of the maintained system are taught to identify those in need of specialist help in reading and writing, and in other areas of education as well. Secondly, to specify that no student is qualified to teach in primary or lower middle schools who has not been successfully trained to teach reading and writing. Thirdly, to provide, from the earliest possible date, in-service training in teaching of reading for those now teaching in primary and lower middle schools who have not already received such training.

The only acceptable delay in these three provisions will be any that may prove necessary in order to implement the recommendations of the Bullock Committee as they relate to the content of courses. Fourthly, in the educational priority areas the local education authorities must aim much of their effort at making the job of teaching in them an agreeable, fulfilling and respected career. This must eventually mean reduced class sizes, better pupil-teacher ratios and more support from general educational welfare officers. Ideally, this means an end to split site and over-large schools, certainly an end to creating them, as well. When teachers again enjoy teaching then we shall not be far from the day when children enjoy being taught by them. Fifthly, we should introduce assessable standards of attainment in reading, as in other skills, not as a means of selection but as a means of diagnosis of our own success or failure in giving literacy to children, the basic means of furthering both their education and their future careers. If we take those steps we will slow down the production of adult illiterates, but what about those who already exist? I shall refer to this very briefly, but I expect the noble Lord who replies will cover this ground.

May I welcome the allocation of £1 million, referred to by both the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, and the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley. Incidentally, for non-recurring charges I understand that all expenditure for the coming year will be administered by the National Institute of Adult Education. I would say that if this is, as I suspect it will be, a successful scheme, then in the light of the experience gained thereby a ten-year scheme should be built on the basis of the lesson learnt. The tapering of demand at the end, if it is successful, will be largely, I hope, absorbed by the needs of the existing immigrant community and recruits thereto. They, in their need for help with literacy in a foreign language will take up much of the time.

The adult illiterate is in an acutely embarrassing condition—it is analogous to that of alcoholics anonymous. Some of them carry about a pair of broken spectacles as an excuse for asking somebody to read a signpost or a timetable because of this predicament. This large number is as yet unmeasured and un-measurable. I give a very warm welcome to the three-year series of programmes being launched on radio and TV by the BBC next October. This will reach the adult illiterates, without their having the embarrassment of coming forward, and convince them that help is available. Lord Beaumont of Whitley's interesting idea of the availability of video-cassettes in local centres deserves to be pursued, although it would have to come out of the existing £1 million because the Governments are not empowered to pay money direct to the BBC.

So let us have a conclusion to this over-long speech. I ask Her Majesty's Government to look favourably on the five recommendations I have made on the teaching of reading in schools, to overhaul, up-date and strengthen the training of remedial teachers, especially for dyslexia and also in the guidance of parents of dyslectics. I would ask them to institute a campaign in all Government Departments for the use of simpler— which usually means better—English and, if their experimental disbursement of the £1 million to which I have referred is successful, to make that an important permanent feature of the remedial education scene in this country.

6.30 p.m.

The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION and SCIENCE (Lord Crowther-Hunt)

My Lords, first of all let me say how grateful we are on this side of the House to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for initiating this extremely important debate. In a characteristic speech of great power and restraint he led us over all the problems and difficulties that we face in this fundamental question of literacy, and throughout it was illuminated with the practical idealism borne of his great experience in educational questions. The same wise characteristics marked the most distinguished maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill. It would be presumptuous of me to congratulate the noble Lord, but I want to say how much I admired what he said and the way he said it. I am sure we have all learned a great deal, too, from the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, concentrating as he did on the distressing and difficult problems of dyslexia. This of course was the theme of the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, in yet another formidable and expert maiden speech.

There is no denying the importance of literacy. At the basic functional level we need to be able to operate efficiently and effectively. We need to be able to read the label on the medicine bottle, and the forms which plague us all, including the noble Lord, Lord Elton—and he criticised the forms particularly from the Department of Health and Social Security. We need to be able to follow safety instructions at work and to communicate with one another in an increasingly complex society. At a rather different level, we need access to literature for personal enjoyment and to enrich our lives.

But whether it is literacy for work or pleasure and entertainment, certainly we need it. Here I completely disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Sudeley, in his controversial theme—I use the word "controversial" advisedly because it is one of the disallowed words —about the dangers of literacy. Perhaps I am not entitled to my own opinion on this because apparently none of us is entitled to our own opinion on this or, indeed, on anything. I do not accept anything that the noble Lord said on the subject and I feel sure that noble friends on both sides of the House would also repudiate and would not accept what he said.

I come next to the question that has been raised in the debate about the falling standards, or whether standards are falling so far as literacy is concerned. Measurement here is notoriously difficult. In 1972 the National Foundation for Educational Research published the most recent in a series of national surveys on this subject which was conducted at the request of the Department of Education. Broadly speaking, so far as 1970-71 is concerned, it showed that the progressive improvement in reading standards which had been observed in previous surveys between 1948 and 1961 had not been maintained. One might deduce from the surveys that at the 15-year-old level there was an increase in scores between 1948 and 1971, though the increase in the 1960s was marginal. For the 11-year-old groups there were steadily rising scores until the early 1960s. That was then followed by a slight decline by 1970–71. But we hope that the Bullock Report will throw further light on the assessment of the present situation.

This is where I should like to disagree as tentatively as I can with the noble Lord, Lord Blake, in his reference to the literacy standards at Oxford and of our university undergraduates and graduates in general, because he even included the D.Phil, in this context. He asked me to endorse what he had said about the decline which he has found in literacy standards in Oxford since 1946 or 1948. But I cannot endorse that. I have not been at Oxford for so long as the noble Lord; I was an import from the other place. However, I have been there for over twenty years and, during this period, I have not detected the decline to which the noble Lord, Lord Blake, referred. I say that in the context of the fact that though he admitted he gave up teaching six years' ago, because he was called to other and higher duties, I have not yet given up teaching at Oxford. I still continue teaching on. Saturday mornings to make sure that I am in close touch with the literacy standards of the pupils at least in my own college and those who attend my university lectures. My experience does not tally with that of the noble Lord in that respect. Whatever the precise figures are, this is an area in which we must express concern.

What we must be particularly concerned about is what is being done and what should be done about literacy standards. It is in this context that it is a great pity the Bullock Report could not be published before this debate. We have moved heaven and earth within the Department to try to achieve its publication before the date of this debate but in the end it has turned out, most unfortunately, not to be possible. The Report should be available later this month or in the very near future. The setting up of the Bullock Committee by the previous Government was an indication of the concern on all sides that we must take further action, and the most effective action possible, in this field. When the Report is published no doubt we shall all find it is a most valuable contribution to our understanding of the extent of the problems that we have been discussing this afternoon and what we should do about them.

A number of suggestions have been made in speeches by noble Lords: the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, at one point was placing emphasis on the Initial Teaching Alphabet. This was taken up by the noble Lord, Lord Gordon-Walker. The noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, pressed the importance of the Initial Teaching Alphabet, as did the noble Lord, Lord Gordon-Walker. But we all recognise, as both of them did, that so far as this system is concerned there is the difficulty of the need for the child to change over to the standard alphabet at a later stage.

An independent assessment of the value of the Initial Teaching Alphabet was carried out between 1965 and 1968 on behalf of the Schools Council by the late Professor Warburton and Vera Southgate. Their report was published in 1969. They found that while children initially learned to read faster by the Initial Teaching Alphabet, after about three years of schooling their reading attainment was roughly equal to those of children taught by the orthodox alphabet. Their conclusion points however to the ITA system as being a valuable method of learning which has undoubtedly produced very good results; but they do not make the case for its adoption in place of other methods. Let us hope, with the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, that no doubt the Bullock Report will throw further light on this. In any event, we need to remember that it is for the schools them-selves, not for the Department, to make decisions on these matters.

The noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, warned us of the dangers of getting the balance wrong between the responsibilities and duties of the Department on the one hand, and not interfering too much, or at all, in precisely what hap-pens in the schools, on the other hand. There is something here that we can do and we are in fact doing—and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will be particularly pleased with this point. The Department announced last year its intention to set up an Assessment of Performance Unit. The noble Lord was perhaps particularly concerned that we were not doing enough to monitor what was happening. The aims of the unit are to encourage the development of better and more varied methods of assessing the performance of pupils in schools. It is expected that the procedures developed will go beyond the field of literacy alone, and will help teachers to monitor the progress of individual pupils more effectively and so pro-vide more surely for their progress. The assessments should also make it possible to identify differences of achievement, related to the circumstances in which children learn, so that all who are concerned with the problem of under-achievement, whatever the cause, can be supplied with information that will enable them to deploy available resources in the most effective way.

Lord ELTON

My Lords, may I ask for illumination on this: is this an internal operation of the Department, as it were, or is a method being developed and standards being produced which can be used by the schools themselves?

Lord CROWTHER-HUNT

My Lords, the unit is internal to the Department, but it is seeking to develop standards in consultation with all outside bodies so that they may be used within the schools themselves. It is in this general context that I welcomed the most helpful contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley. He will no doubt be pleased to learn about the Educational Disadvantage Unit, which has been set up by the Government inside the Department. It will be particularly concerned with children who seem likely, among other things, to find difficulty in learning to read. It will not include within its interest children who are ascertained as handicapped: it will be looking at the normal child. Of course, the Warnock Committee is concerned with the education of handicapped children, and that will be reporting in due course.

There is, as we all know, a small group whose reading abilities are significantly below the standards which their abilities in other spheres would lead one to expect Here, of course, I am talking about the problem of dyslexia. The noble Lord, Lord Renwick, has particularly drawn your Lordships' attention to this problem in telling us of his personal experience. The noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, and the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, have anticipated much of what I should have said about this distressing and baffling condition. As the noble Lord said, this term of dyslexia is applied to the condition of a comparatively small group of people who find it very difficult to acquire the skills of reading and writing, but who show no obvious reason for this. Their general ability is very often above aver-age, and their home backgrounds contain none of the symptoms of disadvantage with which educationists are now only too familiar. But they cannot learn to read as other children do.

It was because of growing concern that the then Secretary of State asked the Advisory Committee to report on this subject. Their Report, Children with Specific Reading Difficulties, set out the problems and suggested ways of dealing with them, but did not produce complete or simple solutions. Indeed there cannot be simple solutions in this area. I shall certainly bring to the notice of my right honourable friend the remarks that have been made today about the need for more research and for many more facilities in this area.

I should like at this point to pay tribute to the work of the British Dyslexia Association, to which many speakers have referred, and which is of course well known in the Department. It was perhaps because of the natural concern which parents displayed in the work of the Association that the Tizard Report of 1972 did not mention this specifically but talked about "people with reading difficulties". I agree wholeheartedly that it is an essential part of helping these children to take parents completely into the process of helping them and to draw on all the help that they will give, as the personal accounts we have heard this afternoon have shown.

I turn now to suggestions about colleges of education and the teaching of reading. It has been suggested that the colleges of education are failing to teach the teaching of reading. This is a point which is of as much concern to the colleges themselves as it is to the rest of us. They are conscious of their duty to equip teachers to teach the skills of reading and the use of language, and they have themselves been examining and re-examining their aims and methods here. It is only fair to say that the colleges, like the teachers, are beset by a number of theories about the right way of learning to read, and they cannot hope to please everyone all the time. However, I accept the point made by the noble Lord that this is an area where we need to give all possible advice, without interfering with what is being done. I am sure that the sentiments of your Lordships in this context will have been noted by the educational world in general, and by colleges of education in particular.

Lord ELTON

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to go a little further? He will remember the figure I quoted of one teacher in eight in the primary sector having had no training in the teaching of reading. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe that a quarter of those teachers received that in their first two years, and therefore have come through the training machinery very recently indeed. So what we have here are not different methods taught by different people but the fact that no training at all is being given. Is it altogether out of order for the Government to advise colleges? After all, the Government instruct schools to teach religion, so why should they not advise colleges on the teaching of reading?

Lord CROWTHER-HUNT

My Lords, I take note of what the noble Lord has said and will take advice on this subject with a view, I hope, to taking appropriate action, because my concern about this is as great as that of the noble Lord and of others who have spoken this afternoon.

Turning now to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, about social disadvantage, his great emphasis was laid on the fact that one way of making a major contribution in this area would be to "get rid of poverty". I may be summarising the noble Lord unduly, but that was part of the burden of what he was saying. Research has confirmed that in all developed countries there is a firm relationship between reading ability and social circumstances. The National Child Development Study has shown that the gap in reading ability between children from different social backgrounds widens as the children grow older. It is part of the Government's general policies, and also of their educational policies, to give special help to deprived families and areas. This should do something to help in the longer term to make some contribution to the solution of the problem. I think it will also do something to ameliorate the situation referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, when he spoke about the turnover of teachers. This is particularly acute in certain special areas, and our policies are designed to do something about that.

The Government are also committed to the expansion of nursery education. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education said in another place last April, the aim of the Government is to make provision as soon as possible for nursery education for children of three and four years of age, mainly on a part-time basis. The necessary building programme has already begun and local education authorities in England have allocations which total £21.5 million for projects to start during the current building year. It is inevitable that the whole programme will take time to complete, and for the present some young children cannot enjoy the benefits of nursery education. Local education authorities have been asked to give priority to meeting the needs of disadvantaged children here.

Now illiteracy and semi-illiteracy are not confined to the present school population. Many adults, as has been mentioned by several speakers, have to wrestle with these problems. Their school days are behind them but their lack of reading and writing skills creates for them many of the difficulties experienced by their younger counterparts. Their numbers have been variously estimated. Figures of 2 million have been mentioned by noble Lords this afternoon. One noble Lord went as far as to say 3 million. Whatever the true number may be, there is no doubt that in this country, with all its educational advantages, the problem is much larger than it should be.

It needs no special perception to recognise the poignancy of the illiterate adult's situation. Many conceal their difficulties, even from their wives and families. In some instances, so great is the embarrassment caused to them by illiteracy, adults have been known not only to carry round a pair of broken spectacles, as was noted by a noble Lord, but to bandage their writing hands or pretend they have forgotten their reading glasses if they think they will be expected to read or write. Others refuse promotion at their work, although well able otherwise to take on more responsibility, because by promotion they fear their lack of reading and writing skills will be exposed.

That is why last July the Government announced their readiness to make additional resources available to help institutions working to combat adult illiteracy. The Government's action does not mean that a great deal is not already, and was not already, being done. Local education authorities and voluntary associations, such as the Settlement movement, were and are making increasing provision; and much has been and is being done by the British Association of Settlements, and, more recently, the National Committee for Adult Literacy, to encourage those already engaged in this field, and to focus attention on what more needs to be accomplished.

Mention should be made here, of course, as noble Lords have emphasised, of the role played by the BBC and the independent television companies as well as by the Press. Their programmes and articles have helped to spotlight the needs of illiterate adults and have held out hope to them by demonstrating that it is still possible for adults to learn to read and write, even late in life. Indeed, the BBC, as noble Lords have noted, has taken an imaginative initiative, which will surely have an important influence on all provision in this field, by its three-year project to teach adults reading and writing skills, which will begin on television in the autumn of this year.

The Government believed that further action was necessary to help local education authorities and other institutions working to combat adult illiteracy. To take such action is in keeping with our belief that, in times of economic stringency, nevertheless resources should go to those who need them most, and it is fully in harmony with the important emphasis of the Russell Report on the role of adult education with the disadvantaged. The Government were also concerned that, at a time when local authorities and voluntary bodies are under very considerable financial constraints because of our present economic difficulties, the BBC's television and radio literacy project was likely to stimulate an increasing—and probably very considerable—number of requests for further teaching. We wanted therefore to be able to help local authorities and other bodies to respond to these demands. So the National Institute of Adult Education was invited to establish an agency to administer the sum of about £1 million, as noble Lords have mentioned this afternoon, to be provided by the Department of Education and Science and the Scottish Education Department during this and the next financial year.

The Institute has accepted this invitation. The agency will provide local education authorities and other bodies with audio-visual and other technological aids (initially for use in connection with the BBC's project), arrange crash programmes for the training of tutors and for the trainers of tutors, provide teaching materials, help voluntary agencies with some minor capital expenditure, and provide some short-term action in the area of research and experimental programmes. The agency expects to be fully operational by April of this year. The National Institute has just appointed Mr. H. D. Hughes, Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford, and President of the Workers' Educational Association, as the chairman of its management committee; and the Inner London Education Authority have kindly agreed to second Mr. William Devereux, the Authority's education officer in charge of community education and careers, to be its director.

So, my Lords, an impressive amount is being done and is in the pipeline—not enough, of course. Many noble Lords have made many suggestions this afternoon which I have not taken up and which I have not had time to reply to— I see I have now already been on my feet for 25 minutes and so I do not want to weary your Lordships longer. But I hope I have said enough to show that the Government are doing a lot and want to do more in this area. I have taken note of the five points of the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I prefer them very much to the 14 points of the noble Lord, Lord Sudeley. The five seemed to me to move in the right direction, just as the other 14 moved in the wrong direction, although I have no doubt that Lord Sudeley would take comfort from some of the statistics which Lord Elton put forward on the extent of illiteracy today. It must have been very pleasing news indeed to Lord Sudeley, although I must say it was not very pleasing news to me and to my noble friends on this side of the House.

My Lords, a lot is being done—but not enough. This is true of so much we should like to do in so many other aspects of our national life if funds were unlimited. But I think I have said enough to indicate that the Government have a real concern for all the questions that have been raised today. If your Lordships feel that we are not doing enough or moving fast enough—and no Governments ever do enough in the pursuit of good causes; we should all like to do more—then I have no doubt that this debate, followed soon by the publication of the Bullock Report, will give a new urgency to our efforts and will generate still more pressures in this right cause. All this I very much welcome, and we will do our best to continue and develop our policies accordingly.

6.57 p.m.

Lord MAYBRAY-KING

My Lords, it would be discourteous if I did not say a word at the winding-up of this debate. It would be even more discourteous if I said many words at the winding-up of a debate. May I first express my thanks to the three noble Lords on the Front Bench, the noble Lords, Lord Blake, Lord Elton and Lord Crowther-Hunt, for their notable contributions to this debate. I take very much to heart the peroration with which Lord Crowther-Hunt ended his speech. One small detail is that I have been asked by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, who sat throughout the debate until just before the end, if I would read one little note from him. We have been talking about dyslexia. Lord Halsbury devotes much of his time to the problems of nurses, doctors and medical auxiliaries in hospitals, and he writes: In the course of visiting 70 hospitals to study the working conditions of nurses, midwives, para-medicals, et cetera, I paid particular attention to the work of speech therapists. Although they are in short supply for their own work, they do their best to occupy the vacuum that is at present represented by lack of dyslexic therapy. At least, there is a positive note, even if it is only a detail.

I am grateful to two very old friends of mine: the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, for the kind of able speech I would have expected him to make as his maiden speech; and the noble Lord, Lord Gordon-Walker, who has been working with me in a voluntary capacity in the field of ITA for a very long time. At a certain moment this debate took a very dramatic turn. We heard the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Renwick, who spoke about his own child—and I would echo the tribute that Lord Renwick paid to his wife for all that she has done for the dyslexic child. It was followed by a speech by the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, who has now made dyslexia his life's interest, and is President of the Dyslexia Institute. It was followed by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, who spoke about the problems of his own child's reading disabilities and learning disabilities. That was followed by my close friend the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, whose life fighting her own disability has the admiration of us all, and who now has to cope with the disability of having a dyslexic son—a son whom I met a week ago when she was taking him for treatment.

The debate suddenly became very warm and very human. There was a moment when the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said that when you are faced with this problem you find that you stand alone. I had been talking about the lack of a good home life as one of the great causes of illiteracy. The examples that we have had this afternoon show that these reading disabilities can enter the homes of good families, and that dyslexic children, or children with speech difficulties and the rest, with loving parents, with parents who are better off, at any rate have a little more chance than children who have the same disabilities but come from homes where nobody cares for them. One hopes that the story which the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, told us of his own efforts on behalf of his own child—all the problems involved—and the story which the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, told us of all the interviews and problems she had to face in looking after her son, will stimu-late the appropriate Department to increase the provision that we make for those who suffer from reading disabilities of any kind.

I think that this has been a useful debate. I began by expressing my thanks to those on the Cross-Benches for allowing me to initiate it. I am grateful to all who have taken part in it. In a way, it is a forerunner to the appearance of the Bullock Report. I hope that from what has been said today, and, above all, from the appearance of the Bullock Report, there will be a real drive towards the ending of illiteracy. I deliberately have not referred to the noble Lord, Lord Sudeley. I have tried to remember one point upon which I find myself in agreement with him. I know from the Who's Who list that his hobby is ancestor worship. However, I agreed with him when he told us that Macaulay was a bigoted Whig. I would ask him to agree that Dr. Johnson was an equally bigoted Tory. Both were distinguished literary figures. What was wrong with them was not that they were literate, but that they were bigoted. The noble Lord seemed to equate the two. My Lords, I am grateful to everybody. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.