Adult Literacy and Numeracy

Debate between Christopher Pincher and Brian Binley

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

I will obey Mr Speaker’s admonition to be brief, not least because I do not think I could hope to match the expertise already shown by other hon. Members.

I should like to say a few words about my own constituency experience, but let me first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) on securing this debate and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who made a very thoughtful speech. I agree with him that this issue should not be party political. I agree with him that Governments of every shade have failed to get to grips with dealing with adult education, illiteracy and innumeracy. I hope he will agree with me that the failures of the past must not be the yardstick for the future. When my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) asks, “When do we deal with this issue?”, I hope we will all say “Now” and I hope the Minister will say “Now”, too, when he replies shortly to the debate.

I am pleased to say that unemployment is falling in my constituency and is now lower than at any time since before the recession. The biggest barrier to entry to employment for young people in my constituency, however, is illiteracy and innumeracy. When I talk to local employers—small and medium-sized enterprises such as light engineering firms and chemicals or plastics firms—they tell me “Yes, we can find new 40 and 50-year-olds to replace the people who retire, but we do not have younger people with the right level of numeracy or literacy to replace our employees.” That presents SMEs in my constituency, and in the country, with a ticking time-bomb, as they will struggle to find the right people with the right skills to replace their employees. Unless we are able to educate young adults and the kids at school now, we will not succeed in the global race about which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor rightly talk.

We also face a challenge with communication. We all deal every day with constituents who raise problems with us via e-mail or letter. All too many of my constituents who write or e-mail me are older people. My office gets lots of phone calls from younger people with housing, immigration or tax issues, but when my office says, “Can you send us an e-mail or write to us to provide more detail so that we can fully understand your problem”, all too many respond by saying, “Actually, we would rather not e-mail and rather not write because we are not comfortable about doing that.” How can we hope to help our constituents when they cannot communicate effectively with us about their problems and concerns?

[Mr Binley]

I believe that our libraries can offer much more training than they are at present. I urge the Minister to look at the connection between education and libraries, particularly with regard to technology. I am one of the people who are bemused by it. It is right to point out that this is a generational issue, but I think we could do much more in our localities through our libraries if only there were more of a joined-up approach to the problem.

[Christopher Pincher]

Mystic Binley demonstrates once again his crystal-ball-gazing skills, as I was just about to come on to the issue of libraries. The local library in my constituency, provided by Staffordshire county council, offers free books to help adult readers. A local volunteer organisation, DIGIT—the dyslexia information group in Tamworth—provides support to those adult learners by providing them with reading buddies. DIGIT does even more by providing help for Tamworth’s young children falling within the scope of the dyslexia spectrum to improve their reading, writing and arithmetic skills. Academisation has also helped. My local head teachers now have more scope to decide what to teach, how to teach it and whom to employ. GCSE results at the Rawlett School, for instance, have improved significantly this year. However, more still desperately needs to be done.

We have the adult and community learning fund—to which I am sure the Minister will refer—the skills for life fund and the traineeship programme, all of them underpinned by Government and supported by money so that young adults can be helped to learn, but I must ask the Minister to consider two other issues. The first is the teaching and knowledge of dyslexia in our schools, which is at best uneven. Tamworth has some good dyslexia teaching schools, such as Wilnecote high school, but others are less good. That is because there are not enough teachers with the right skills, and not enough head teachers who know enough about the scope of the dyslexia spectrum to deal with young people who suffer from the condition. We also need to ensure that there is as much dyslexia teaching in primary schools as in secondary schools, so that dyslexia can be recognised and dealt with as early as possible.

The second issue, which I hope the Minister will consider during his discussions with his colleagues in the Department for Education, is the need for more vertical integration between primary and secondary schools. All too many students in my constituency go to secondary school at the age of 11 with a reading age of seven. They are doomed to failure at GCSE the moment they walk through the door of their secondary school. We need secondary schools to know as early as possible which kids face challenges so that they can help the primary schools to help those children, and the children can go to secondary school with a higher reading age and improve their chances of obtaining better GCSEs. We must ensure that children do not walk into a cliff face at the age of 11 because their secondary schools did not know who they were.

I think that if we do what so many Members today have suggested we do—and if the Minister at least takes on board the two points that I have raised—we shall be able to improve literacy and numeracy, and improve the life chances of so many of our constituents who, for so long, have been disregarded and have not been helped.