Jean Gross is a former Educational Psychologist who has been an adviser to government on literacy policies since the introduction of the Literacy strategy in 1998. Whilst not disputing the 20% leaving school unable to read to the required standard for their age, she believes that it is important to concentrate particular effort and focus on the 6% of children who have very serious long term literacy problems.

These are the 6%, rising to nearly 9% amongst boys, who achieve below National Curriculum Level 3* in English at the end of Key Stage 2, when they are eleven and are the same as the 6% of adults identified in Basic Skills Agency studies as having very low literacy skills and the 6% at national qualifications framework Entry Levels 1 and 2 identified in the 2003 Skills for Life survey.

What are the consequences of literacy failure?

I spent a lot of time in my early career as an educational psychologist working with this group of children with very low literacy levels. I would be asked to 'see' seven-year-olds who could not read, assess them and make recommendations. I would go back and assess them when they were nine or ten and find they still could not read, and by now were feeling really bad about themselves as learners. I would make recommendations that might bring them extra funding (usually in the form of a teaching assistant who would be allocated to sit next to them in class and help them with their work). Then I would go back when they were in secondary school and find they still could not read, and by now were beginning to show behaviour problems or to truant from school. It was all too easy to see what lay ahead of them – a lifetime of difficulty and disadvantage.

What can we do about it?

In 2005, the KPMG Foundation, the charitable arm of the accountancy business for which I work, set up an initiative, designed to tackle these children's literacy difficulties. The programme provides highly skilled one-to-one tuition for six year olds who have failed to learn to read after a full year in school.

The scheme has been outstandingly successful. Children receiving help have made four times the normal rate of progress, with eight out of ten catching up completely with their peers after just 38 hours of one-to-one teaching. Some people say that the one-to-one teaching provided in the scheme is 'too expensive'. It costs about £2,400 per child – not far off the total amount that a primary school gets per child per year to fund one child's whole education. It is understandable that primary schools do not feel able to fund the programme entirely from their own budgets. They need a funding top-up. This is what the charitable funding has provided.

Demonstrating the savings

We needed to demonstrate to government that a funding top-up of this kind should continue to be provided once the charitable funding for the scheme ended in 2008. One way of doing this was to work out the savings that would accrue to the public purse as a result of tackling children's literacy difficulties early on and effectively.

To do this the KPMG Foundation commissioned research that puts a cost against each of the potential consequences of literacy failure – special educational needs provision, truancy, exclusion from school, reduced employment opportunities, social costs linked to early school leaving (such as teenage pregnancy and drug and alcohol abuse), increased health risks including obesity and depression and a greatly increased risk of involvement with the criminal justice system.

The findings

• The researchers found that the largest group of children making a call on special educational needs (SEN) resources in schools are those with literacy difficulties.



• Typically a secondary school spends about £3,500 on special needs, behaviour and attendance support for each child entering the school at the age of 11 with very poor literacy skills (below Level 3 in English).



• By the age of 11, 34% of children with very poor literacy skills (the bottom 5.5%) will have Statements of special educational needs.



• Pupils entering secondary school with very poor literacy skills were five times more likely to be excluded from school and four times more likely to truant than pupils without literacy difficulties.



• Only 1-2% of pupils entering secondary school at this level get five good GCSEs compared to 56% of all pupils.



• Men and women with poor literacy skills two to three times more likely to smoke heavily, drink alcohol more than once a week and be obese on a body mass index calculation than their more literate peers.



• Women with very low literacy skills are five times more likely to be depressed than women with good literacy skills.



• The incidence of dyslexia and other hidden disabilities in the prison population, at 20%, is between three and four times that found in the general population.

The costs

The KPMG research shows that the cost to the public purse of pupils in England leaving primary schools every year with very low literacy skills works out at between £44,797 and £53,098 a head during half a life-time – an annual cost of £1.73BN to £2.05BN.

The annual costs can be broken down like this:

Employment related costs are the largest area of saving with costs to the education system and the costs of crime next largest.

The research balanced the costs of providing effective early intervention for children with literacy difficulties against the savings that result. The researchers estimate that every £1 spent will yield savings of between £15 and £18 over the next 31 years.

The savings that would be made to the age of 37 as a result of implementing effective help at the age of six with all of the pupils who leave primary school every year with very low literacy skills were estimated at between £1.37BN and £1.62BN.

*Calculation the number below Level 3 by adding % coded.
 B which means working below the level of the test – this means they were not entered because teacher assessment suggested they were below Level 3
 N not awarded a level – this means they were entered but did not score well enough to be awarded any level
 2 This means they were entered and scored enough to be awarded what is called a 'compensatory level 2'

A copy of the report The long term costs of literacy difficulties can be downloaded here »

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Author: Jean Gross, Director, Every Child a Reader

Ruth Miskin – What the Government Should Do | The Rose Review | Improving Literacy: The Government's Strategy | Leitch Review of Skills | Getting the Basics Right | The Rowntree Report (June 2007) | The Long Term Costs

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