Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking tackle the language gap between the most and least advantaged pupils.

The Department recognises that extended school and college restrictions have had a substantial impact on children and young people’s education and are committed to helping pupils make up education lost due to the COVID-19 outbreak. To address this challenge, my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, is committed to working with parents, teachers, and schools and colleges to develop a long-term plan to help schools and colleges to support pupils make up their lost education over the course of this Parliament.

There is sound evidence that systematic phonics is a highly effective method for teaching early reading. The evidence indicates that the teaching of phonics is most effective when combined with a language-rich curriculum. Evidence has also shown that phonics is an important component in the development of early reading skills, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Our phonics performance has improved since the tests were introduced. In 2019, 82% of pupils in Year 1 met the expected standard in the phonics screening check, compared to just 58% when the check was introduced in 2012. For disadvantaged pupils, this has gone from 45% in 2012 to 71% in 2019. 2019 results showed that by the end of Year 2, 91% of pupils met the expected standard in the phonics screening check.

In June 2021, the Department announced £1.4 billion of additional funding for education recovery. This is in addition to the £1.7 billion already committed, bringing total investment announced for education recovery over the past year to over £3 billion. The additional funding package provides support for children aged 2 to 19 in schools, colleges and early years settings, and will increase reforms in two areas where the evidence is clear our investment will have a significant impact: high quality tutoring and teaching. This will provide an additional £1 billion for tutoring, which will allow us to provide up to 100 million hours of tuition for 5-19 year olds by 2024, targeting disadvantaged children and key subjects such as maths and English.

The National Curriculum has been designed to make sure that all children leave primary school fully literate and ready to progress at secondary school. One of the overarching aims of the National Curriculum is to ensure that all pupils acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language. The curriculum for English increases the level of demand from an early age with greater emphasis on grammar and vocabulary development.

The Department also launched a £26.3 million English Hubs Programme in 2018, dedicated to improving the teaching of reading, with a focus on supporting children making the slowest progress in reading, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds.