Children need time to listen and learn

The Times December 12, 2005

Sir, In his report on the teaching of reading, Jim Rose (report, Dec 2) has pointed out yet again that "listening and speaking are the roots of reading and writing". He advises that "settings and schools need to do more to boost listening and speaking across the curriculum". As specialists in literacy, early years' education, speech and language acquisition and developmental psychology, we warmly endorse this view. Children cannot learn to read and write until they are able to listen attentively and speak clearly and fluently.

In a multimedia world, in which children increasingly arrive in nursery or primary school with poorly developed speech, attention and social skills, the development of oral language is of even greater importance. Many have had few life experiences beyond watching TV, and there is much groundwork to be done before these children are able to read and enjoy books, wield pencils and understand what writing is about.

However, our extremely early start on formal education (the earliest in Europe) leaves little time for early years' practitioners to develop children's speaking and listening through the sort of first-hand experience and child-friendly structured activities used in other European countries.

While children elsewhere follow a "kindergarten curriculum" until they are 6 (indeed, in Sweden and Finland, which do best in international studies of literacy, until they are 7), children here are often required to start on more formal approaches to reading and writing when they are 5, 4 and sometimes even 3.

Many fall at the first fence in literacy learning and, sadly, catch-up programmes do not seem to work. We believe this to be a key reason behind our country's inability to reduce the "long tail of underachievement", especially in areas of deprivation, despite the huge investment of recent years.

Improving literacy standards is one of the most important social and educational projects of our age. But our early start on formal literacy is not working. Early years' education should be about laying sound foundations for literacy, not about asking children to read and write before they can talk.