Andrew Smith – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Smith on 2014-03-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of long-term trends in the number of hours of literacy teaching which primary school children receive and how this affects reading and writing attainment.

Elizabeth Truss

We do not collect data on the number of hours of literacy teaching primary school children receive.

We are committed to raising standards of literacy in schools and making sure that every child masters the basics of reading and writing at a young age. The new primary national curriculum for English is explicitly designed to make sure that all children leave primary school fully literate and ready to progress at secondary school.

The new national curriculum sets out very clearly what should be taught to pupils. However, it gives school the flexibility to decide how to teach it, including how much time to spend on teaching literacy, because schools are best placed to determine the needs and abilities of their pupils and how to meet them.