Michael Gove speech to the Durand Academy

Michael Gove speech to the Durand Academy; Gove speech SOT - By making it easier to take vulnerable children into care, making it easier to ensure those children are adopted quickly and making it easier for those who adopt to secure the future of those whom they have enfolded in love. If we do not act we will perpetuate the suffering of innocents by allowing them to be inducted into a lifestyle without boundaries, self-respect or hope. And in the same way as I support intervention to ensure children arrive in school ready to learn so I support intervention to ensure children in school learn the most important thing of all; how to read. - You cannot read to learn until you have learnt to read. But the level of illiteracy in England is shocking. At the end of primary school one child in six still cannot read properly. And illiteracy is concentrated in some of our poorest communities. A full 42 per cent of black Caribbean boys, and 60 per cent of white boys eligible for free school meals aren't reading properly at the age of 14. But there is nothing either inevitable or fixed about the number of people who cannot read properly. We know that teaching using the right methods can effectively eliminate illiteracy. Using systematic synthetic phonics, a traditional method of sounding out and blending letters, can help almost any child save the most severely disabled to read English, whatever their socio-economic, cultural or ethnic background. - Rigorous academic research in Scotland, in Clackmannanshire and West Dunbartonshire, has confirmed that the early and effective deployment of systematic synthetic phonics effectively eliminates illiteracy. Which is why we are providing schools with the resources and teachers with the training to deliver effective phonics teaching in every classroom. And we will hold every school to account for how successfully they teach reading. Every child will have a new reading check after two years at primary school to ensure they are dec...