Press Release | December 4, 2014 We need more primary educashun, says MP The government education secretary should visit Bradford to see for himself why the citys primary school leavers are failing to read sufficiently well. Ive invited Jeremy Hunt to come here to see the extent of the problem and set about sorting it, George Galloway MP said, after a damning report found that children in his Bradford West constituency are among the lowest achievers in England in reading. To paraphrase Pink Floyd, what we need is more educashun. And now. The report by the campaigning group Read On.Get On places Bradford West among the lowest 25% of achievers. Overall one in four children in England cannot read well at age 11 and that damning statistic rises to two in five among low income families. Its a shocking indictment of our education system, Galloway continued. And before anyone trots out the old saw about English as a second language there are areas of the country with the same demographics as here which are among the best in the country. Like London. Parents in Bradford want the best for their kids and they wont settle for the status quo. Galloway has put down a parliamentary motion and submitted several questions to ministers about the failure, as well as the request for Jeremy Hunt to come to his constituency on a fact-finding mission. The MP is also suggesting that a task force is set up to combat it in the city, and in other parts of the country. In London a few years back secondary schools were failing in the way that our schools are and the London Challenge was set up to take on the problem and the results were spectacularly successful. Schools there went from being among the worst to among the best, Galloway said. Thats exactly the kind of solution I am arguing for, specialists to come in and help struggling but able teachers and improve the less able, or shunt aside those incapable or unwilling to change. By 2020 Bradford will be one of the youngest cities in Europe and by then I am determined that it will be one of the best educated.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 14:44:34 +0000