Studies show that many children across the UK are starting secondary school without age-appropriate literacy skills. A quarter of pupils start Year 7 with a reading age of below 11, and one in five primary school pupils are not meeting reading standards expected of their year groups. Poor literacy levels can follow children into adulthood.
The World Literacy Foundation estimates that around 5.1 million adults in England are functionally illiterate i.e. they cannot read, understand information in a book, or do basic arithmetic. Such individuals typically either have low earnings or are unemployed and are therefore more reliant on welfare benefits. The Foundation also estimates that illiteracy cost the UK economy approximately £80 billion in 2018, of which £24.8 billion was spent on welfare and £55.2 billion was lost through lower personal income and weaker productivity.
There are significant personal and social gains to be made from improving literacy levels of children and young people who demonstrate gaps in attainment. The impact stands to be particularly pronounced for children from low-income families, those with special education needs or disabilities (SEND), or those for whom English is an additional language (EAL). Improved literacy levels can set up young people to enjoy better academic and behavioural outcomes in school, and improved employment opportunities, higher earnings, and better health outcomes later in life. Society, in turn, benefits from a smaller welfare bill and a reduction in crime. Unfortunately, inadequate support to help close literacy gaps acts as a barrier to realising these benefits.
Looking ahead, the issue of low literacy levels is only set to escalate. A recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report highlights declining literacy levels across the majority of 31 OECD countries over the last decade, as technology changes the way many of us consume information, away from more complex writing to social media posts and video clips. Evidence shows that nearly a quarter of older children and young people are now using smartphones in a manner consistent with a behavioural addiction at the expense of time that might otherwise have been spent on reading books. Going back even further, more and more younger children appear to lack basic language and communication skills – the foundation of literacy – around age five when they start school. With underfunded schools unable to adequately counter the impacts of these trends, it is charities such as Right to Succeed that are filling the gap by helping disadvantaged pupils improve their academic attainment and better their life outcomes. Right to Succeed focuses specifically on working with communities among the top 10% deprived areas in the UK to reduce educational disadvantage and to support children and young people who are most in need of it.
The purpose of this report is to calculate the monetary impact of literacy programmes led by Right to Succeed to enhance the literacy skills of pupils on their future earnings. The data shared by Right to Succeed for programmes across two sites, the Blackpool Key Stage 3 (KS3) Literacy programme and the North Birkenhead Cradle to Career programme, allows us to assess the effectiveness and viability of these two bespoke literacy programmes that were undertaken by 5,082 pupils over the period 2018-23.
Our findings show:
Overall impact on attainment: Both programmes improved academic outcomes between the start and end of the intervention as measured by the indicative GCSE grades (which shows the average GCSE grade achieved by past cohorts of students who achieve the same standard age score in the New Group Reading Test (NGRT)). The average GCSE grade is 4 on a scale of 1-9, with 9 the top grade and 1 the lowest. Pupils across the two programmes saw a +0.3 increase in their indicative GCSE grade for English. The improvement was more pronounced (+0.7) for pupils whose initial grade at the start of the programme was below average for their age. This suggests the intervention helps narrow attainment gaps by having a greater positive impact on the grades of pupils who underperform on their initial assessment.
Economic benefits: The total monetary value of higher lifetime earnings as a result of the intervention (expressed in present prices), even under the most conservative assumptions, is estimated to be at least £1.6 million for all pupils who benefitted from the intervention over 2018-23 across the two sites. Under the most optimistic assumptions, the maximum benefits of the programmes assessed would reach £9.2 million.
Value for money: The total cost of running the programmes across the two sites is calculated to be £0.53 million. This suggests that if even only a third of the benefits calculated can be attributed to the programme, it is viable and cost-effective. Even under significantly more conservative estimates of costs per pupil, the benefits of the programme still outweigh costs.
Inclusive impact: Pupils with SEND also saw a greater improvement in outcomes across both programmes than pupils without SEND, as did pupils for whom English is an additional language. These results suggest that the intervention has a greater impact on these relatively disadvantaged groups and has a role to play in narrowing performance gaps.
These numbers, as encouraging as they are, are still almost certainly an underestimate of the full benefits of the programme.
First, far more pupils had the benefit of the intervention than were included in the dataset.
Second, the upskilling of teachers and staff who were trained up will improve outcomes for their future pupils too.
Third, improved literacy will likely have a positive impact on grades across other subjects too rather than just those for English, which has been the focus of this analysis.
Fourth, this study only looks at the benefits of improved literacy on future earnings and does not include any of the other benefits mentioned such as improved health outcomes, a smaller welfare bill, and a reduction in crime.
Quantifying and including these other personal and social benefits, while out of the scope of this study, will almost certainly inflate the value of the benefits calculated. This would lend further credence to the assertion that the Right to Succeed literacy programmes assessed in this study are effective and viable with clear value for money.
The current data only allows us to draw conclusions about the viability of the programme. Looking ahead, the next step is to establish a more definitive causal relationship between the intervention and improved literacy levels. For that, Right to Succeed would need to collect similar data for a comparison group (i.e. monitor grades for children with similar backgrounds but not enrolled on Right to Succeed programmes). The difference between the results for pupils on the programme and those not enrolled on it would allow us to draw stronger conclusions on the efficacy of the intervention. This would further add to the growing body of evidence evaluating the impact of literacy interventions on educational and employment outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged pupils.