Welsh Tories form panel of experts to combat illiteracy in Wales
Emily Price
The Welsh Conservatives have brought together a panel of education experts in a bid to devise solutions to combat illiteracy in Wales.
Natasha Asghar, who serves as Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education, launched her Alternative Literacy Panel on Monday (August 4).
It comes after an ITV News investigation found cueing, a widely discredited teaching method, was still being used in Welsh schools.
Cueing sees children taught to read by guessing words from pictures or the context of a sentence.
Cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked the method because it leads to children guessing words rather than sounding them out.
Phonics
In England, ‘cueing’ was abolished by the UK Government following a parliamentary inquiry in 2005 and systematic synthetic phonics is now taught instead.
The structured approach helps children to learn the relationships between the sounds (phonemes) of spoken language and the letter symbols (graphemes) of the written language.
Following England’s decision to move away from cueing in 2005 reading rates across the border have increased.
Whereas in Wales – 20% of children leave primary school illiterate.
The Welsh Government says it believes phonics is “central” to teaching reading and that ministers expect to see it in all schools in Wales.
Earlier this year, the Cardiff Bay administration set out extra support for schools for literacy and the teaching of early reading, following the commission of a literacy expert panel.
However, the Tories have warned the country is facing “a reading crisis with dropping literacy standards”.
Alternative
Shadow Education Secretary Natasha Asghar, has met with her own alternative panel several times over the last few months.
She says the group has proposed a series of improvements and strategic direction, which will help shape the Welsh Conservative manifesto for next year’s Senedd election.
The panel includes Sir Nick Gibb, a former Minister of State for Schools in the UK Government from 2010 – 2012, 2014 – 2021 and 2022 – 2023.
We asked the Welsh Conservatives who else was on the panel – but we were told the other experts wished to remain anonymous.
Natasha Asghar said: “I am incredibly grateful to all of the experts who have joined my Alternative Literacy Panel and provided robust solutions to the reading crisis currently facing Wales.
“Low literacy can seriously hamper an individual’s future learning and job prospects, hit their confidence, and we know illiteracy is significantly correlated with crime.
“I am determined to improve outcomes for our young people and this Alternative Literacy Panel is a first important step in bringing about meaningful change.”
Synthetic phonics
Sir Nick Gibb said the Welsh Government should be listening to Asghar’s expert panel who have advocated systematic synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading in Welsh schools.
He said: “As the UK Schools Minister for 10 years, we legislated to require systematic synthetic phonics in schools in England, and we introduced the Phonics Screening Check to be sure that children had been taught to decode words and to ensure no child slipped through the net with their reading difficulties unidentified.
“As a consequence of our reforms, England is now fourth in the world in the reading ability of our 9- and 10-year-olds according to the PIRLS international survey.”
A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “Phonics is central to teaching reading and we expect to see it in all schools. The Curriculum for Wales guidance is clear that the systematic and consistent teaching of phonics is fundamental to teaching reading, alongside vocabulary building and comprehension.
“Earlier this year, we set out a range of extra support for schools including further support for literacy and the teaching of early reading, following the commission of a Literacy Expert Panel.
“All literacy support is based upon the latest evidence and co-constructed with experts and practitioners. We are already seeing improvements in levels of attainment.”
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How depressing is it that we’ve yet to learn how to teach our children to read?
Oh. And stop closing libraries.
Nicely done. I was not a high achiever but was educated entirely in Cymru. The Tories cannot claim any credit for my education (including the Ted Heath interruption) as I was leaving school shortly after the life destroying Thatcher juggernaut crashed in but she did immediately adversely affect the start of my working life with rip off schemes that enabled companies to abuse me for the provided advantage. Very quick and aggressive change which attempted to finish me before I started so no forgiveness for them ever. I always survived in SPITE of them, never because of them,
In this article, we hear that 20% of children educated in our country are leaving primary school illiterate. Despite hearing of improvements, we do not get a percentage figure of how many children educated in England leave primary school illiterate. What is that figure? I read the word ‘alternative’ way too many times in this piece and all driven by a person in whom, understandably, I have zero trust with experts from over the border involved. Our governments’ statements are in here but we have to have an ‘alternative’ from a party we have already dispatched from our land and… Read more »
“Whereas in Wales – 20% of children leave primary school illiterate.”
What percentage relates to
(1) English medium primary schools
(2) Welsh medium primary schools.
Gibb?
Jebus H Kerist.
Just thinking, who has Kemi told them to use. I don’t expect this to be a Welsh let panel (see Gibb). Heritage foundation links?
All the more reason to teach them in Cymraeg! At least the phonetics are consistent.
English is a bloody nightmare to learn with its ridiculous spellings
Is this the same Tories that constantly slashed funding to education for decades, closed down hundreds of youth groups and basically took everything they could??
Can we assume this is another education story where the Cons pretend everything is better in England until it turns out that half of the English regions are actually worse but hiding behind the very highly performing wealthy south east where every child has a governess and private tutor.
Phonics works. My daughter was taught at nursery using the Letterland system (phonics) which we backed up up at home and as a consequence she was able to read to a degree when she started at Infant school. Depressingly, the school Head was not too pleased as daughter was miles ahead of the other kids which was suggested would pose problems for the teachers.