Report: Primary literacy suffers because of funding gap in England

The British government should increase primary school budgets to match those in secondary schools to pay for specialist teachers to tackle illiteracy, experts say. The multibillion pound investment in education since 1997 has been undermined by a failure to teach pupils the basics by the time they are 11, according to the biggest review of primary education in 40 years.

The Cambridge University-led Primary Review today (February 29, 2008) publishes a series of papers which report that higher test results have been at the expense of the quality of primary education, with a 20% funding gap between primary and secondary schools. Teacher-pupil relationships have been eroded by a focus on whole-class teaching and preparation for “high stakes” national tests, it claims. Read more about the reports in The Guardian online.