Investing in good quality childcare to get every child reading well

A report published yesterday shows that young people in England are struggling with basic literacy skills more than in any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

One in five 16 to 19 year olds in England struggle with basic literacy tasks like reading medicine packaging. The consequence of this is that the generation leaving school today are much less likely to have the same basic skills in literacy as the generation of adults that are approaching retirement. The report found that in every other OECD country the reverse is true.

We know how important reading is for children’s lives. That’s why, as part of the Read On. Get On. campaign, we’re working to ensure that every child in England develops the skills they need to read well and get on.

Good language skills are crucial to reading well

But we also know that good reading skills are built on good language skills. Our priority ought to be addressing the fact that far too many of our children start their first day of school behind, risking staying behind throughout school.

Our research has shown that without good language skills children will struggle to learn to read well:

•    More than one in two children who struggled with language skills at age five struggled with reading at ages seven and 11

What’s more, we know that children growing up in poverty are much more likely to struggle with language than their better off peers:

•    Five year olds growing up in poverty are on average about 15 months behind in their language development then their peers

Today one in five children in England are starting primary school without the language skills they need. If every child is going to be a confident communicator and good reader we need to do much more to support their early development.

Investing in childcare to support children’s development

High quality childcare can play a key role in this.

On the basis of their findings, the OECD argues that the government needs to do more to invest in literacy and numeracy skills right from the start.

We know from the evidence that good quality childcare can have a huge range of benefits for a child’s development. It can also have particular benefits for children growing up in poverty and provide information to parents that helps them support their children’s development.

For the government to deliver on its ambitions to boost social mobility it has to invest more to boost the quality of early years childcare.

We’ve argued that the best way of doing this is to ensure every nursery in the country benefits from the leadership of an early years teacher.

By doing this the government will have a real impact on the lives of children up and down the country.