English children's literacy levels 'among the worst in the Western world'

English children's literacy levels 'among the worst in the Western world'

Last updated at 13:09pm on 28th November 2007 Comments

Children's literacy levels in England now trail behind Scotland, the U.S and France

English children's literacy levels are among the worst in the Western world, a devastating international survey has revealed.

England has plummeted down a global league table of reading standards among primary school children, sliding from third place five years ago to 19th.

We now trail Scotland, the United States, most of Europe including France, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states.

Only two other participating countries suffered a bigger deterioration in performance since the last study in 2001 - Morocco and Romania.

The findings explode ministers' claims that standards have continually risen under Labour, which has doubled education spending on schools and nurseries to £50billion-a-year.

At least £600million has been invested in primary school literacy initiatives alone since 1998.

Published results in England's own national tests suggest an improvement in English scores of five per cent over the past five years.

Yet our showing in independent international tests suggests that, far from improving, the performance of England's primary pupils has actually declined.

Our shock slide in international rankings will add to Gordon Brown's woes and increase pressure on the Prime Minister to unveil a shake-up of the primary school curriculum when he unveils Labour's Children's Plan next month.

He is expected to overhaul the testing regime amid claims that a grinding exam culture is affecting children's enjoyment of learning.

England's poor showing was also being blamed yesterday on a failure to put traditional "synthetic phonics" at the heart of literacy lessons.

The back-to-basics method of teaching children to read - credited with virtually wiping out illiteracy in part of Scotland - only become law in schools last September.

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) involved giving reading tests to thousands of 10-year-olds in 40 participating countries last year.

The tests, which assessed pupils' comprehension of factual information and their appreciation of literature, were translated from English into more than 30 other languages.

England came XX in the test of "reading for information purposes" and YY in the test of "reading for literacy purposes".

In the study's launch year, 2001, England was near the top of the class with 553.

But this year we came 19th place overall with a total of 539 points.

In the latest rankings, we are still above an international average of 500, which has been dragged down by scores in the 300s in Belize and Morocco.

Today's table is particularly embarrassing for Labour since ministers trumpeted improving standards in the three Rs as a key success of Tony Blair's first term.

Between 1998 and 2004, £531million was spent on primary school literacy initiatives with £720.5million earmarked for maths and English combined up to 2008.

Our performance internationally will fuel claims that results in national tests are unreliable and rising performance owes more to "teaching to the test" than real gains in pupil understanding.

A decade of education reforms has been accompanied by an increase in the schools and early years budget, which has risen from £27.2 billion in 1996 to £49.4 billion last year.

Yet Ofsted has highlighted teachers' own poor grasp of grammar and spelling as one reason for stalling standards in the three Rs.

The study was overseen by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and carried out in England by the National Foundation for Educational Research.