Literacy levels not improving -NESF

Weaknesses in the Government's action plan to help children in disadvantaged schools have been criticised in a new report by the National Economic and Social Forum (NESF).

Delays in implementation of the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) programme and a lack of literacy goals for schools are among the problems identified in a study by the NESF.

NESF chairwoman Maureen Gaffney said that despite such programmes child literacy levels have improved little in decades.

“Despite many good practice and successful initiatives both in-school and out-of school there has been little significant shift nationally in levels of child literacy problems among pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds over the last 25 years,” Ms Gaffney said.

The five year DEIS plan was launched in 2005 and supports over 800 primary and secondary schools which are designated disadvantaged. When started it was combining already existing schemes at an extra cost of €40 million per year.

Some schools have still not received all of the supports promised in the 2005 plan, said the report, which focuses of primary school literacy. In other schools the rollout of many services were delayed by two years until 2007, the report said.

It is also critical of the lack of penalties for schools which do not achieve improvements in literacy and the lack of rewards for those schools which do well.

Allowing schools to define what a successful outcome is in terms of literacy “risks a fragmented response”, Ms Gaffney said.

While some schools set high standards in raising literacy levels, other schools “struggle to articulate a positive literacy policy,” she said.

The plan was expected to help the Government's goal to halve literacy problems in disadvantaged areas (from 30 per cent to 15 per cent). However this national goal is not linked with the goal of individual schools, Ms Gaffney said.

The plan was also criticised for only covering disadvantaged primary schools which account for just 22 per cent of schools. Thus it was not reaching many children experiencing disadvantage in other schools.

A lack of information on progress, a lack of coordination across agencies and a lack of literacy data to show what was working well, were among other challenges which the report identified.