Literacy

In a recent study of gang culture , Harriet Sergeant found that most young gangsters had poor or very poor literacy skills.  Whether reading failure is a cause or consequence of delinquent behaviour has long been argued.

However, reading failure is deeply humiliating.  Once you fall behind, school becomes pointless—no matter how much teachers differentiate (i.e., dumb down) lessons, every school day is an exercise in futility and an ordeal of boredom.

Fortunately, it is not all that difficult to teach pupils to read and spell.  Given a good structured programme—and a lot of persistence—almost any child can become a fluent reader and a good speller.

Put simply, the problem is the DfE:  schools are so overloaded with meaningless objectives and pointless paperwork that it is very difficult to find time to give children the extra help they need.  The problem is exacerbated in secondary school, where there are very few teachers with the time, confidence and inclination to help poor readers.

At the Phoenix Free School, all pupils will receive intensive instruction in basic literacy (and numeracy) skills before they begin serious study of other academic subjects.   The key will be the Sound Foundations decoding and spelling programmes, which have enough built-in reinforcement to ensure that pupils get adequate practice.