Efforts to improve primary schools attacked

Ministers’ “massive efforts” costing “many hundreds of millions of pounds” to improve education in primary schools “have had a relatively small impact”, one of England’s leading experts on educational standards has concluded.

The £597m spent by government on the National Literacy Strategy in 1998-2005 “had a barely noticeable impact on reading”, for example. The research by Peter Tymms of Durham University, one of England’s top testing gurus, and colleague Christine Merrell, will make grim reading for the government.