Leader: Acceptance of poor literacy is no way to help the young

Published on Saturday 26 November 2011 00:00

HAVING served on the Literacy Commission set up by the Scottish Labour Party and whose recommendations, published in 2009, formed much of the Scottish Government’s action plan to improve literacy announced last October, Iain McMillan, director of CBI Scotland, is in a good position to know what needs to be done to improve standards in reading and writing. H

His call for marks to be deducted in school examinations for poor spelling and grammar is worth considering.

Speaking as leader of an employers’ organisation, he made the point that many written job applications from otherwise capable students end up on the reject pile because they are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors and are poorly presented. With youth unemployment soaring, it means that many able young people may not get even a chance of a job simply because they lack an everyday basic skill. This is unacceptable.

It has consequences, not just for the individual, but for society as a whole, as was noted by education secretary Michael Russell in the foreword to the government’s action plan. Poor literacy skills are associated with low educational attainment, limited job prospects, poverty and lower social and political participation, resulting in costs which are borne by the whole country in greater social and material deprivation.

Aiming to achieve a highly literate society does not have the drama of some other policies, such as promoting economic growth, but it is arguable that a country where literacy standards are rising will grow faster than one where a substantial part of the population is to some degree illiterate.

Scottish illiteracy levels are not disgracefully low, but appear to be roughly on a par with rates in other developed countries. The worrying thing is that while literacy levels appear to be rising in many of our competitor countries, they are static here. And when the Literacy Commission found that as many as one in five children leave primary school with functional illiteracy – being able to read and write basic sentences but not at a level which can cope with everyday requirements – there is a big problem to be tackled. Being functionally illiterate means that a child will struggle with all subjects in secondary school.

It may come as a surprise to many to learn that school students do not lose marks for poor spelling and grammar. That is because it has been deemed that demonstrating knowledge of a subject is more important than correctly spelled words. Partly, the idea is that children who come from homes where the parents may be illiterate or where there are no books should not be handicapped. But perhaps in doing this, education is sustaining rather than eradicating such handicaps. Mr MacMillan’s proposal is not among those in Mr Russell’s action plan, which has many good ideas and strategies for improving literacy. It should be.

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AllanJC

Sunday, November 27, 2011 at 10:48 PM

Yearnings for the golden age of literacy ar (sic) not new. Apart from the Literacy Commission of December 2009 finding that nearly one in five Scottish pupils wer "leaving primary school without being functionally literate", there hav been such findings in most English-speaking countries for over a century. – In 1864, a large majority of examination candidates wer said to be "ignorant of the first principles of punctuation," according to the University of Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations report on school examinations. "They either insert wrong stops, or none whatever," it says. – In 1858, the examination report said: "It was evident that the principles of grammar, as exhibited in the English language, are not made a matter of systematic study in our schools." – The golden age of exams is a myth as even 50 years ago the standard of English in O-levels was deemed "very unsatisfactory", an educational assessment body has claimed. – The Observer, London, Aug 10, 2008 – From "State Schools since the 1950s: The Good News", by Adrian Elliott "... the 1950s when, it is said, illiteracy, had disappeared. Yet school inspectors then reported widespread problems. In a Birmingham secondary school illiteracy persisted "into the fourth year" whilst in a Cheshire secondary many pupils "could barely read on entry". In English, there is a tension between teaching creativ riting and teaching spelling. If we want to make them compatible, and raise literacy rates, we need to fix our spelling. Its dysfunctional, and one of the basic causes of our worldwide 20 percent illiteracy rate.

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jimbonojambo

Sunday, November 27, 2011 at 12:04 PM

A bit late getting on this rickety bandwagon Mr McMillan, but you are more than welcome! This problem is not new and it is wrong to blame poor standards on texting and computer spell checkers. Some young people, professionals among them, are even too lazy to use an "English UK" spell checker!

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