Local Authorities Improving Life Chances: A Review of a New Approach to Raising Literacy Levels

Public policy continues to grapple with the fact that the most powerful factor determining literacy levels--the home learning environment--lies outside of its control. Tickell's recent review of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum has called for the early years curriculum to be recast as a partnership curriculum jointly owned by settings and parents, allowing it to impact more powerfully on the home learning environment. Partners in Literacy--the National Literacy Trust's two year project with local authorities to raise literacy standards by improving literacy support for the most vulnerable families--has had a massive impact. The project staff are particularly proud of the difference it has made to the numbers of families accessing literacy support and on the confidence of vulnerable parents and carers in supporting their children's literacy. This report explains how it worked and provides invaluable research to drive the development of a new approach to support literacy standards which will work with the new public service context with a focus on improving the home learning environment. Three lessons sit at the heart of this report: (1) The potential of existing services can be unlocked to allow them to reach the most vulnerable families to support their literacy; (2) This is achieved through stronger local planning and marketing; and (3) The driving factor in achieving this is partnership. This report offers a route map to all who are committed to addressing the increasingly urgent issue of low literacy, through the most powerful approach of working with families in a radically new public policy context and in a changing civil society context. Appended are: (1) An overview of the pilot at a national level: set-up and national networks; (2) Evaluation framework; and (3) Networks and frameworks supporting the pilot. (Contains 13 footnotes.)