This month saw the publication of The Literacy Commission Report in Scotland.
The Commission, set up by the Scottish Labour party but consisting of an independent group of educationalists, academics, business people and authors, has spent the last eighteen months investigating Scotland’s literacy problem.
The Commission found that around 1 million, or one in five, Scots had problems with literacy, with 39% of men and 36% of women of working age having literacy abilities at a level that was likely to impact on their employment and life chances. They also found that 18.5% of children in Scotland leave primary school without being functionally literate, some 13,000 children a year at current population levels.
Illiteracy and innumeracy has a huge impact on the lives of individuals affected, who struggle to fully participate in society and reach their potential, but also on Scotland’s ability to compete on the world stage.
In addition to raising awareness of the scale of the problem, the Commission also identified a number of practical measures which they recommend be implemented to start to tackle this issue.
The recommendations started from the base of underlining the importance of accepting that socio-economic issues, or poverty as it’s otherwise known, are the main underlying causes of illiteracy and that early years intervention was necessary to address the negative impact of poverty.
The Commission stopped short of advocating the eradication of poverty as the most obvious way to address this issue, although it is fair to say that this was implicit in their findings.
The specific recommendations which the Commission did advocate spanned the use of synthetic phonics as a teaching methodology across all Scottish local authorities, the introduction of a testing regime which not only shows competence for school leavers, but also identifies children who are struggling at an early age to enable intervention, and the need for continued professional development for teachers to ensure that every teacher has the skills to drive forward literacy levels.
Scottish Labour now plans to produce a Literacy Action Plan to take these recommendations forward.
This report is important, not just in its findings and the implications for literacy rates in Scotland, but in the indication of the approach which Scottish Labour has chosen to adopt. Whilst the SNP make sweeping statements which turn out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors, with a track record littered with broken promises, Scottish Labour have adopted a policy-driven approach.
Scottish Labour are looking seriously at the challenges facing Scotland today, and figuring out solid, deliverable ways to best address them. This is responsible, meaty, grown-up politics.
Whether it’s the re-regulation of bus companies, or affordable housing, or modern apprenticeships, Scottish Labour are showing not only that it is possible to make a difference, but that they are a government in waiting.
The challenge now is to draw all these practical policies together to develop an inspiring, coherent narrative to communicate this to the Scottish electorate. We’re getting there with walking the walk, it’s time now to think about how we talk the talk.