One man's quest to eradicate illiteracy

On the north bank of the Clyde, just a few miles from Britain's nuclear-submarine base, rows of grey, crumbling low-rise flats represent a part of Scotland scarred by poverty: West Dunbartonshire. In 1997, 28 per cent of children who graduated from West Dunbartonshire's primary schools were functionally illiterate - which means they have a reading age of less than nine years - and further studies confirmed that they were likely to leave secondary school in the same state. Handed down from generation to generation was a "what's it ever done for me?" attitude to education, and, to those looking in, poverty had become an excuse for failure. Now all that has begun to change.

Ten years ago, Tommy MacKay, a respected local child psychologist who enjoys "messy, real-world research", set West Dunbartonshire a goal that many believed unachievable: to eradicate illiteracy by 2007. "We tend to accept quite high levels of failure and tend to use poverty as an excuse for failure," says MacKay. "Our position was to challenge that. If it's because of poor attitudes, unacceptable values about whether education is a good thing, then we have to change that".

Over the past 10 years the region has individually assessed 60,000 pupils. In 2006, West Dunbartonshire recorded 96 per cent literacy, and is on track to achieve 100 per cent by the end of this school year. The same cannot be said for the rest of Britain. Every year 100,000 pupils leave school functionally illiterate. How has MacKay done it? And can others hope to follow?

His approach is two-pronged. On the one hand he recommended a new kind of teaching method - synthetic or "jolly" phonics - the same method now being rolled out across England on the recommendation of the Rose review. In this programme, children are taught to pronounce the 44 individual sounds (24 letters and 20 phonemes such as "ae-" and "ai-") that make up the English language. Soon afterwards they begin to blend them to form words. Dorothy Craig, a primary teacher at Kilbowie Primary in West Dunbartonshire, believes that this has made all the difference: "Getting them to blend early is definitely helping. I would say I felt a little bit less hopeful for the kids before, but this has given me a lot more optimism as a teacher."

MacKay's approach, however, wasn't just about a new method of teaching literacy. In earlier research in schools in the region he'd found that, if you didn't change the curricula at all, but changed the children's attitude towards reading, you could push up their reading age by as much as a year. So, in West Dunbartonshire, he set out to change everybody's attitudes - from the children to the dinner ladies to the head teachers. And how did he do it? He made them an offer they could refuse.

MacKay believes that "too much imposition" is standing in the way of English education. "There's a constant stream of new initiatives being handed down from central government, a larger number than ever before, with teachers constantly finding they are having to try and meet demands," he says. "Civil servants working under the directives of politicians don't bring about inspiration and revolution, and revolution is what is needed if you're going to turn things right around."

That is why MacKay began by simply offering schools the chance to participate in his experiment. "No one was compelled to do it," says MacKay. In the first year nine schools came forward, and teachers were given additional training and classroom assistants, all funded by the Scottish Executive, which found "eradicating illiteracy" an easy soundbite to get behind. The results were so remarkable that word spread like wildfire and "the following year schools came to us," says MacKay. They continued to do so until all 35 primaries in West Dunbartonshire had signed up.

That's not to say that MacKay wasn't met by sceptics. When Aileen Rice took over the headship of Kilbowie Primary, five years ago, she had her doubts. "I really didn't expect the amount of support we've received," she says now. "I have 12 learning assistants. That's a lot. I think the difference is other authorities say, 'you have to do this', but West Dunbartonshire backs it up, with money, with personnel, with staff development, with resources. You're not just handed it, they work hard to win hearts and minds - it's an entirely different thing."

For her, the programme also came as a welcome antidote to the rigid five to 14 curriculum, which had become untenable in Scotland, and was eventually done away with in 2003. "I think I can speak for most of our profession in Scotland; five to 14 killed us, it stifled good teachers," says Rice. "It was a stranglehold around us. It's a different thing with jolly phonics."

Step inside Kilbowie Primary, and there's a homely, happy, buzz in the air. The children here are from poor homes, some are Polish immigrants and can't yet speak English, but there are enough staff to help those with extra needs. Among them is Amber Parlane, 11, who, in the past, would most likely have left school functionally illiterate. "Some of the books are so hard and I'd go home and start reading them and then just fling them about because I'd lose my temper," she explains. "It felt like all the words were in the air."

That was before she began Toe-by-Toe, West Dunbartonshire's reading programme for older pupils that uses silly sounds and nonsense words to get them to make the connection between symbols and sounds. "I feel more relaxed," says Amber. "I'm not angry at all now. But I don't want to be a writer when I'm older. I want to be a pop star."

So can England hope to follow the Dunbartonshire experiment? Tom Burkard, the director of the Promethean Trust, a Norwich-based charity for dyslexic children, believes that a drastic change in attitudes is needed for that to happen. In a paper for the Centre for Social Policy Research, Burkard said that even if the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) adopted the best programme of synthetic phonics, it would still be incapable of capturing the enthusiasm and cooperation of the country's teachers. That is because teachers have become demoralised by decades of "reading wars" over how to teach literacy combined with too many edicts from on high.

"More control is not the solution," he opines. "Indeed, it is the problem. It is time for politicians and the DfES to realise that the power of a successful example can do better than more well-intentioned but doomed, top-down, Government edicts."

This is a call that resonates with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL). "We want to get back to teachers being given the ability to use their professional judgement," says Dr Mary Bousted, the ATL general secretary. "Nobody can say centrally what is going to work, because every child is different."

The ATL is hopeful that change is on the horizon as the Government begins pushing its Every Child Matters agenda, which would require teachers to find different teaching methods to suit children's needs. But the union does not support the "unargued leap" to synthetic phonics recommended by the Rose review, seeing it as another example of the Government's micro-management of education.

In West Dunbartonshire, success came because the Scottish Executive gave teachers their heads and the money to adopt a system once they themselves could see it was working. Until teachers in England are given the same freedom and support, it looks as though the reading wars will continue to rage.

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