Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps his Department has taken to raise levels of literacy in Nottinghamshire.

The Government is committed to continuing to raise literacy standards, ensuring all children can read fluently and with understanding.

The Department launched a £26.3 million English Hubs Programme in 2018, building on the success of our phonics partnerships and phonics roadshows programmes. Hub schools are taking a leading role in improving the teaching of early reading through systematic synthetic phonics, early language development, and reading for pleasure. The Department has appointed 34 primary schools across England as English Hubs. This includes Horsendale in Nottingham, working with a number of primary schools in Nottinghamshire and the surrounding area to raise levels of literacy.

Phonics performance is improving. In 2018, there were 163,000 more 6-year-olds on track to become fluent readers compared to 2012. This represented 82% of pupils meeting the expected standard in the phonics screening check, compared to just 58% when the check was introduced in 2012.

In addition, Nottinghamshire schools have received approximately £1.1 million in additional funding to raise levels of literacy and numeracy of Year 7 pupils.