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Gary Kempston
Illustration by Gary Kempston Photograph: Gary Kempston
Illustration by Gary Kempston Photograph: Gary Kempston

Children must learn to love reading, not just learn to read

This article is more than 9 years old

Your editorial (Literacy: helping all children, 12 September) is a re-run of the well-wishing and hand-wringing we’ve heard many times before. The question of helping children to read has to involve (among other things) two key matters: availability of a wide range of reading matter that appeals to the children involved; children’s freedom of choice – the “right to browse”, as I call it. Central to this is the provision of books in local and school libraries with qualified staff on hand.

In the neglected Ofsted report Moving English Forward (2012) there was the recommendation that every school should develop a policy on “reading for enjoyment for all”. This has the potential of opening a nationwide discussion about how best to enable all children to read for pleasure. This was not only overlooked by the last education secretary, it was explicitly rejected by the then schools minister when I asked him if this government would be implementing this recommendation. He said that this government’s policy was to avoid interfering in what schools do. I don't think he was experimenting with irony with that. Three years later, the present secretary of state has that recommendation sitting in front of her. Instead of rolling out homilies about getting grandparents to read to their children, she should go back to her own inspectors’ report and do what they suggest.
Michael Rosen
London

Patrick Wintour (Report, 8 September) writes that the UK has the second most unequal level of children’s reading in the EU but, as the English Spelling Society points out on its website: “Italian children who start school at six have repeatedly been found to be able to read and spell most words one year later, whereas English children take 10 years to achieve an adult standard of spelling (Schonell & Schonell 1950; Vernon 1969, 1977; Thorstad 1991).” Is the need for spelling reform going to be complacently ignored much longer by English people who seem incapable of understanding that other peoples look on their treasured institutions (such as an antiquated spelling system) with disdain and disapproval?
DBC Reed
Northampton

The closure of public libraries across the country or their divestment from local authority control to volunteers (raising fears as to their sustainability) will surely impact on the success of the children’s reading initiative. I sincerely hope Save the Children UK will acknowledge this, as the success of its project depends upon it. Political leaders are currently allowing the public library service to be dismantled piece by piece, turning a blind eye to children being denied ready access to free books and the expert assistance of library staff.  It is imperative that Save the Children and The National Literacy Trust do not follow suit. They must lobby government for a change of direction, so that their efforts to achieve improved literacy in the country can be realised and not ring hollow.
Shirley Burnham
Swindon, Wiltshire

Any initiative to improve literacy levels is to be welcomed. I do hope however that the campaign will understand that the key to getting children reading is first to engage them in wanting to read. Literacy levels have remained stubbornly stuck despite a plethora of government initiatives, such as the literacy hour, because children are introduced to the mechanics of reading and writing too early. It is the love of story and the development of language that is needed in the early stages. At our school we find that children learn more quickly and without stress when one introduces reading and writing at age six rather than four, especially when matched with a curriculum steeped in the wonder of storytelling. Good SEN intervention is also needed for some children. 

A recent inspection report concurred with our own assessment that by age 11 our children had equalled or exceeded reading levels of children who started learning to read much earlier. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are also more likely to be stressed and therefore adding the pressure of learning to read before they are ready is not going to work, however many hours you put into it.
Frances Russell
Greenwich Steiner School

Having spent a working life helping Hackney infants, deprived or not, in learning to read, I welcome the launch of the Read On. Get On campaign. But however worthwhile the aim of “galvanising the nation so parents, grandparents and volunteers play their part in teaching children to read” I fear it will prove no more useful than a sticking plaster unless our wealthy but unequal society can also be galvanised to radically reverse the trend to ever-greater levels of economic inequality, which correlate so clearly with children’s unequal reading levels.
Peter Walford
London

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