The 20% barrier

Establishing exactly how much literacy failure the inconsistencies of English spelling produce is difficult. This would require an identical survey to be conducted in all English-speaking countries at the same time and to matched groups of people.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence that poor literacy is a major concern of their governments. Over the past couple of decades they have all increased their spending on literacy teaching in primary schools and on remediation of adult literacy problems. In the US the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) initiative was introduced to drive up standards. In the UK, the Literacy Strategy launched in 1998 and the more recent ECAR (Every Child A Reader) had a similar aim.

They have also paid for many literacy surveys and studies into literacy problems and how to reduce them for at least a century. The never-ending disputes among teachers, academics and government advisors about how best to teach children to read and write and at what age formal literacy teaching should begin also suggest that English literacy acquisition is problematic.

A government-commissioned survey by Sir Claus Moser into adult basic skills in England in 1999 found that around 7 million adults (22 %) had a literacy level which was inadequate for everyday reading needs. An earlier US survey had also found that roughly 1 in 5 adults have literacy standards which leave them functionally illiterate.

School tests give a similar picture. The SATs (Standard Assessment Test) results of 11-year-olds in England since 1997 also suggest that around 20% of children cannot manage to become competent readers and writers by that age. The tests were introduced to ascertain how many children acquire literacy skills which are adequate for secondary education before they leave primary school. By labelling schools in which a high proportion of children did not manage to achieve this as ‘failing’, they were also aimed at driving up standards.

They were first introduced by the Conservatives in the early 1990s but substantially modified after Labour came to power in 1997. Their new tests were first used in 1998 and found that only 64% of 11-year-olds were achieving an adequate standard in English (Level 4). By the following year this had jumped to 71% and by 2000 to 75%.

Labour immediately claimed this as evidence of having transformed literacy standards in English primary schools by the introduction of its Literacy Strategy in 1998. It does however seem far more likely that the spectacular rises in the percentages of pupils achieving Level 4 between 1998 and 2000 (from 64% to 75%) were due mainly to the introduction of new tests and teachers learning to teach to them, rather than the new Literacy Strategy.

The SATs are taken by 11-year-olds. The new teaching method imposed on schools in 1998 was initially implemented just with 5-year-olds. An additional year group was subject to the new guidelines each year thereafter. It not did impact on the teaching of 10-year-olds until 2003. It could not have any effect on their results in 1999 or 2000. Moreover, the 2003 cohort performed exactly as that of 2000, with still only 75% achieving Level 4 in English.

Nor have there been any dramatic improvements in literacy standards since. Just modest 1 per cent gains for a few years, followed by regression. The results now stand at 80%. It seems that, with the current spelling system, breaking that 20% barrier of functional illiteracy is just not possible, no matter how much money is spent and how much schools get vilified for failing to achieve what governments would like.