Could do better on education policy, Mr Clegg

Nick Clegg cannot be faulted on his ambition. His plan to improve child literacy in Britain within 10 years, on which we report today, aims high. He describes it as “ending child illiteracy”, which is, paradoxically, to undersell it. The proportion of 11-year-olds who cannot read or write at all is insignificant. When politicians talk about pupils leaving primary school “unable to read or write” they often leave out the word “properly” or “to the expected standard”.

Mr Clegg gives the impression that the state of English schools (Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish schools are devolved matters) is terrible, which is odd, given that his party has been jointly responsible for them for five years. But at least he is specific about what he means by “illiteracy” even if it is not what most of us would mean by the word. He means the failure to reach level 4b in reading.

This is a level reached by 78 per cent of pupils at the end of primary school last year, up from 75 per cent the year before. Mr Clegg’s target is to raise this to 100 per cent by 2025. Now, there are a number of problems with this, but setting his sights too low is not one of them. Nor is his choice of reading a bad one.

Tony Blair once set an absurdly testing aim to end child poverty within 20 years. Again, the problem was not that it was too ambitious, although it was. At least the Labour government set a clear direction, even if there is no prospect of meeting the target, as defined by children in families on below 60 per cent of median income, by 2020. Much progress was made, not just in lifting families with children out of poverty but in tackling some of the deeper causes.

Unfortunately, Mr Clegg seems to have learned too little from the drawbacks of the Labour government’s policy. Although it is worth pausing, first, to savour the irony of the Liberal Democrats, having in opposition castigated Labour for its reliance on “top-down targets” now setting another top-down target themselves. The problem with Labour’s child poverty target is that the target was poorly defined, and the policies had not been thought through.

The same applies to Mr Clegg’s plan. The 100 per cent at level 4b is poorly specified because it immediately invites scepticism. Anyone with any knowledge of education knows that a 100 per cent score in anything is implausible. There is nothing wrong with ambition, but unrealistic targets can be demotivating.

More fundamental is the question of whether the Lib Dems have the right policies to achieve the target. Mr Clegg is expected to announce a manifesto promise to raise the early years pupil premium and to ensure all nursery teachers are qualified. But there are serious doubts about whether this is the right strategy for delivering better 4b results. Many educationalists argue that starting formal learning too early inhibits progress later on for some children – presumably for the very children who will find it harder to reach 4b. As we report today, opposition to new baseline tests for four and five-year-olds is growing, on precisely these grounds.

It is hard to escape the feeling that this target, laudable though it may be, has been plucked out of a brainstorming meeting to come up with ideas for the manifesto. It feels a bit like Mr Clegg’s last policy idea for schools – free school meals for five to seven-year-olds, which is now up and running. That, too, was laudable, although it is possible that Mr Clegg focused on the wrong meal. According to the Magic Breakfast charity, as we report on page 26, a free school breakfast might have been a better way of raising standards, and of helping to close the attainment gap between pupils from rich and poor households.

Congratulations, Mr Clegg, on your ambition, but more work is needed to convince us that the policy has been thought through.