Children's future depends on reading, writing and speaking skills - Davey

6.18.43pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 6th Oct 2005

Responding to today's Ofsted report which shows that there is an 'urgent need' to tackle the problem of pupils leaving primary school without the basic skills in reading and writing, Edward Davey MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary, said:

"Reading, writing and speaking are the most basic and most important skills for any child. By failing to get a grip of this problem the Government continues to jeopardise the future of thousands of pupils.

"Many children must master basic listening and speaking skills before they can improve their reading and writing. Labour's narrow-minded approach fails to address this problem.

"Pupils can't be expected to succeed at GCSEs if they don't know how to read and write when leaving primary schools."