Best reading in schools for a generation

Mr Gibb attributed progress in England to the introduction of phonics, which uses individual sounds and blends them together to make words. He said that “dogmatic romanticism” had prevented teaching using such evidence-based methods before his tenure, which started in 2010. However, it was Ed Balls, education secretary under the last Labour government, who announced phonics programmes for schools in 2008.

England was joint tenth in the last set of Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) results in 2011, and 15th in 2006 but was yesterday revealed to be joint eighth with Norway and Taiwan out of 50 countries. Russia was first, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong and Ireland. French pupils were Europe’s worst readers, prompting President Macron’s government to promise an all-out effort to raise basic skills in schools.

England still has a long tail of underachievement, with a wider range of scores and many children posting results among the worst internationally, but experts said its highest achievers were among the best in the world.

While there is a considerable gender gap, with girls outperforming boys, average results have risen because of improvements among boys, who outnumber girls as low-achievers. The report states: “In England, the gender gap is reduced, with boys in 2016 performing significantly better than they have in all three cycles. The increase in average results has come from the bottom performers — a lot of that is down to the increase by the lowest-performing boys.”

Mr Gibb said the results were a validation of the “controversial” overhaul in literacy teaching. “In the years before we came into government in 2010 . . . England was stagnating in the international league tables . . . Dogmatic romanticism prevented the spread of evidence-based teaching practices.”

He added: “Prior to our reforms, schools were using variations of a method called ‘look and say’ to teach reading. Where schools were using phonics they were mixing and matching with other methods . . . It was in keeping with the philosophical opposition to formal instruction, which was so ubiquitous in teacher training colleges.”

He claimed that the introduction of phonics had been met with opposition from lobby groups: “Those opposed to testing, professors of education who had built a career on teaching teachers to use the ‘look and say’ approach, and the teaching unions. Today we received the first set of international evidence that confirms that our approach is working.”

He used the reported correlation between children doing well in Pirls and those who had performed highly in phonics three years earlier as evidence of the impact of the technique. However, researchers said there was also a correlation between children doing well in Pirls and performing strongly under the older system of checks.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “This is the result of the focus that schools have placed on the teaching of reading over many years.”

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said last week: “The youngest children should not be fed a narrow curriculum diet of synthetic phonics and rote memorisation, but encouraged to explore their world through play.”

Pupils with more than 200 books at home scored about 100 points higher than children with ten or fewer books.