The comprehensive illiterates

Rhodes Boyson

A transcript of the evidence of the headmaster of Highbury Grove School to the Bullock Committee on Literacy My concern for reading standards arose from my earlier experience as Head of English in a secondary modern school and then as a teacher of English at all levels since I became a Head. This has been reinforced by my experience as a headmaster in London, where under pressure of my staff, we have had to establish at Highbury Grove a large remedial department which now absorbs between a quarter and a third of the boys in the school. In September 1970, in one of the most over-subscribed comprehensive schools in London, the average reading age of our intake was 9.3 years against their average physical age of 11.6 years. Many boys have to be taught tO read when they enter the school at eleven-plus and many attain this skill successfully when placed in a disciplined, structured and confident framework where phonic methods are used. The Head of Remedial is a very experienced teacher who works with tremendous dedication and is simply determined that everyone will read. Boys are in school working with him forty ,.minutes before school starts and at lunchtimes, and he regularly meets their parents in the evenings to ensure that they are giving the boys the right support. Parents gladly buy the books he recommends. He is successful with large classes and his success has made me aware of the failure of certain primary schools to do their job since it is the same primary schools which every year succeed or fail in this task of teaching the basic skills.

The eleven-plus examination acted not only as a means of secondary selection but as a con trol mechanism on the primary school curriculum. Literacy and numeracy were important items and this affected the aims of the primary school. It would be a very interesting and probably an il luminating piece of research to assess comparative reading ages at eleven in authorities before and after they had gone comprehensive and ceased to use the eleven-plus examination. I consider that one factor in the fall in standards of reading between 1964 and 1970 was in the decline of the eleven-plus examination.

There is a sad paradox in that the more money is spent giving pupils better facilities and a wide and varied curriculum the less chance they will have of obtaining a sound basic education in the subjects on which all their future progress will depend. The more modern and well-equipped the infant school the more time must be spent in justifying the expense ,of a hall, gymnastic equipment, a playing field, sand and water facilities, radios, television sets, tape recorders etc to the neglect of the three Rs.

It is also doubtful whether the new experimental teaching methods are as successful as the traditional methods in advancing knowledge of the basic subjects. If the school gives freedom of approach then the child from a privileged home where there are books will desire to improve his reading since he sees the printed word as a source of information and enjoyment. He will advance rapidly in his reading. But the child from the deprived home where books do not exist will see little point in reading and he will be content to play games. He will thus fall further behind his privileged brethren until he reaches the point that to justify the gap he pretends he does not ever want to read.

Such children are still illiterate when they arrive in secondary school and the only hope for their improvement is to come under a teacher who makes them read — i.e. actually teaches — and is in charge of the class. They then settle down and learn to read and their gratitude at this point has to be seen to be believed. The cruelty of the informal approach to children from deprived homes is rarely mentioned Continually hearing children read from the same reading books is very boring and it is to ease their and not the child's boredom that many teachers, encouraged by the fashions of the age, have ceased to do their work properly. The new methods are not child centred but teacher-centred education, where they can neglect effective if tedious methods for new approaches every year.

Brian Cane's Roots of Learning, prepared in 1971 for the National

Foundation for Educational Research, showed that children who

were taught to read immediately they entered infant school at five achieved far better results than those kept waiting until they showed 'reading readiness.' Firm teacher control and systematic organisation of reading brought best results. With the expansion of nursery schools it is most important that there is a firm and clear structure within them otherwise they will be counterproductive in literacy and numeracy.

Recent research certainly seems to indicate that there is no relationship between smaller size of class and improved literacy and numeracy: indeed the reverse seems to be true. The National Children's Bureau which studied the lives of 11,000 children born in the same week of 1958 found that reading and writing standards were, if anything, higher for pupils in primary schools with more than forty pupils in a class than in those with less than thirty. It would appear that it is simply the calibre of the teacher and the methods of teaching used which are important. Reduced-size classes have been used to introduce the ineffective ' discovery ' methods while the expansion of the teaching profession has probably led to a decline in the average calibre of teacher.

I have noticed over the years that it is the calibre of teacher and their commitment to teaching which is critical in the education of pupils. One can still rely on staff aged thirty-five and over to be committed to teaching as the passing on of skills and knowledge. Some staff below that age have come from schools and colleges whose ethos has often differed from this older type of teaching and become that of ' liberation' and social change where the teaching and passing on of skills no longer mattered. Thus one has expected to see a fall in standards and as so often the feeling of men on the ground has preceded by ten years the results of research.

There is a world of difference between the Board of Education's Consultative Committee on the Primary School's suggestion in 1931, that the task of the junior school teacher was mainly that of

developing reading comprehension, since only a few ' backward ' children would be in need of systematic instruction in reading after the age of seven, and of the survey of the National Children's Bureau in 1966 which showed that of 11,000 children aged seven some 44 per cent still needed help in reading normally given to infants and 10 per cent had barely begun to read.

Standards can only be improved by agreed national standards of achievement for the average and below-average pupil being stipulated nationally and checked by HMIs or by national examiners. Local authority inspectors all of whom are busily engaged proving their views, courses and appointment are right haven't the impartiality for this.

Recommendations: I. That a check should be made as to whether the fall in reading standards 1964-1970 occurred most in authorities which abandoned the eleven-plus examination.

2. That it should be expected that literacy and numeracy be the basic aim of the infant and primary school.

3. That emphasis should be switched from the attempt to reduce average size of class to the capabilities and commitment of individual teachers and the effectiveness of teaching methods.

4. That there is need for the stipulation of national standards of literacy and numeracy expected from pupils who are not ESN or brain damaged at seven, eleven and fourteen and these be checked by HMIs on their visits to schools.