Are schools failing to teach children to read and write properly? That was the accusation being quoted in various media outlets following the release of a Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) report on Monday.

 

The BBC and The Express used the report to claim that a third of primary school pupils suffered from reading difficulties in London. Max Hastings in The Daily Mail meanwhile reported that one in six Londoners are functionally illiterate.

 

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson – who commissioned the CPS report and authored its foreword – wrote in his Daily Telegraph column that 20 per cent of children are still having difficulties reading when they leave secondary school.

 

All these stories refer to claims made in the CPS report. Intriguingly however, the report itself gives no indication as to the sources of its data, containing neither footnotes nor references.

 

 

Full Fact contacted the Editor at the CPS for clarification, and he initially indicated that all the numbers quoted in the report were based on secondary sources. In particular, we were pointed towards a 2009 Policy Exchange report entitled “Rising Marks, Falling Standards”.

 

The Policy Exchange publication does draw many similar conclusions to its CPS successor. It notes, for example, that in 2008 19 per cent of pupils failed to reach the minimum standard for English – a level four SATs score – by the time they had left primary school.

 

However the Policy Exchange report considers national testing data, and draws no conclusions that are specific to London, the remit of the CPS pamphlet.

 

 

Full Fact therefore returned to the CPS for further details on the source of its research, and this time the report’s author, Miriam Gross, told us that “my primary sources were two Academies that test children’s literacy before they enter the school.”

 

This related to the claim made in her report that 40 per cent of inner city primary school leavers had reading ages of between six and nine. This was one of five such claims whose source was questioned by Full Fact, and we have yet to receive any clarification for any of the remaining four.

 

Even so, the validity of using such a sample to draw conclusions across the whole of London has been called into question by polling experts.

 

A spokesperson for industry regulators the Market Research Society (MRS) told us:

 

“In order for a sample to be statistically useful, it has to be properly weighted to ensure that it contains a representative selection of society… Without knowing the details of this study, drawing from only two distinct sources doesn’t sound representative.”

 

According to the Greater London Authority, there are 1,827 primary schools in London. The two academies questioned by Ms Gross – Mossbourne and City – both take students from ‘about 40’ primary schools, which, in light of the MRS’s comments, would seem a small pool from which to draw London-wide conclusions.

 

 

In Ms Gross’s defence, she claims that “various teachers also mentioned that figure [of 40 per cent]. It is also the figure quoted in various secondary sources.” However without any further information on the anecdotal and secondary material involved, it is difficult to substantiate these claims.

 

A number of institutions have produced respected studies on national educational standards, including the Cambridge Primary Review, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and Durham University’s Performance in Primary Schools.

 

However as a spokesperson for the teachers’ union ATL explained to Full Fact, these have limited relevance for a London-centric study.

 

“Various things only affect certain parts of the UK, so you can’t extrapolate local conclusions from national data,” she said.

 

 

So whilst Full fact awaits a resolution to the mystery of the sources used in the Centre for Policy Studies report, we are disappointed that little thought appears to have been given to their provenance in the media reporting on the issue.