£20 Billion A Year: What Low Literacy Really Costs

So, I mean, what's the exact headline figure we're opening the discussion with today? Well, it's 20 billion pounds a year. 20 billion? Yeah, 20 billion pounds every single year. OK, let's just pause on that for a second because, you know, if you are listening to this on your way to school right now, your first thought is probably exactly the same as mine was. All right. 20 billion pounds sounds like, well, an astronomical school budget line. But just to be clear right up front, that is not what we are talking about, is it?

No, it's not. That 20 billion pounds is actually what low literacy is estimated to cost the UK economy Wow annually Every single year every single year. I just let me process the sheer scale of that because it is Massive is genuinely staggering and to be absolutely clear with everyone listening that figure is not a typo This isn't just a school issue we're talking about today. It's a whole economy issue. So where exactly is that number coming from? Because a figure with that much weight, I mean, it needs a very solid foundation if we're going to build a whole discussion around it.

Oh, absolutely. It comes directly from the Education Endowment Foundation, specifically the 8EF's own guidance report on secondary literacy. OK. And the thing is, you don't even have to dig for it. It's right there in the foreword on page one. Literally page one. Page one. They place that 20 billion pound figure front and center because they desperately want you to understand the sheer magnitude of the situation before you even read the very first recommendation. Well, I mean, they've definitely got my attention with a number like 20 billion, but I have to be completely transparent with you and probably with a lot of the listeners tuning in today.

Yeah, I know exactly where my head goes when I hear phrase like literacy strategy. Let me guess. Yeah, I immediately think English Department. Right, of course. I do not think of me. Because, well, speaking as a science teacher, I mark practicals, not paragraphs, you know. And see, speaking as a literacy coordinator, I hear that all the time. I bet you do. I really do. Based on that exact assumption you just shared, it makes this entire thing my problem and entirely not yours. Right. But what we are going to do today is see if that's actually true.

Because this conversation exists to argue directly. with the idea that literacy sits exclusively in the English department. This is the education commute. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. So to get right into it, the report starts by laying out the actual scale of the problem. And honestly, when you look at it closely, it's It is somehow worse than the headline 20 billion number. Worse in what way? Because 20 billion is already pretty hard to wrap your head around. Well, it's worse in terms of the human impact.

Over 120 ,000 disadvantaged pupils arrive at secondary school below the expected reading standard. Over 120 ,000 disadvantaged pupils. Yeah. Just let that sink in for a moment. If you were commuting in, picture the sheer volume of students that represents. Yes. That is one entire cohort's worth of pupils. A whole cohort? One whole cohort's worth arriving at the secondary school gates across the country, already below the expected reading standard on day one. See, when you frame it like that an entire cohort, it completely forces you to ask what actually happens to them.

Exactly. When they arrive behind at the very start of secondary school, I mean, what does their trajectory look like over the next five years? And this is the bit that should genuinely worry every single subject leader in a school, not just the English teachers. Right. Of those pupils, the ones who are below that expected standard at primary, only 1 in 10 go on to pass English and Maths GCSE. Wait, stop. Only 1 in 10. Only 1 in 10. So you are telling me 90 % of that entire disadvantaged group.

90%, yes. 90 % are not passing English and Maths GCSE. That is a massive failure rate. That is exactly what the data tells us and unfortunately gets even sharper from there. How? Fewer than 2 % get the e -back. Fewer than 2 % get the e -back. Yeah. Okay. That completely reframes how I'm looking at this entire issue. How so? Because if you were looking at those specific outcomes, that's not just a reading problem by the time they reach year 11. That is a science problem.

Exactly. That is a history problem. It's a geography problem. I mean, it is a fundamental problem for every single subject that assumes a pupil can actually access the text sitting right in front of them. Precisely. If a pupil cannot access the text on the page, they physically cannot do the science in my lab. Which is exactly the report's whole argument. Right. That access problem is the central underlying issue across the board. And that brings us directly to the report's very first recommendation. It has a highly specific name, disciplinary literacy.

Disciplinary literacy. Okay, let's unpack the jargon. What does that actually mean? Sure. Because I'll be honest again, the word literacy all by itself already sounds like someone else's job title. Fair enough. Adding the word disciplinary to the front of it certainly doesn't make it sound any less theoretical to a busy classroom teacher. Right, it sounds a bit academic. It sounds like it belongs exclusively to a specialist. But what disciplinary literacy actually means in practice is that literacy isn't just one single monolithic skill. It is general.

and it is subject -specific at the exact same time. General and subject -specific simultaneously. Yeah. I need you to break that down for me because those sound like two totally different things. Let's use the report's own examples to make it really concrete. Okay. Think about the way a scientist reads a graph. Then, think about the way a historian reads a primary source. And then, think about the way a mathematician reads a word problem. Okay. A scientist reading a graph. A historian reading a primary source. A mathematician reading a word problem.

Exactly. Those are completely different reading practices. Right. Think about the mechanics of it. A scientist is looking at axes and data trends. A historian is looking at bias and context. A mathematician is filtering out all of the narrative just to find an equation. Yeah, that makes sense. They're entirely distinct skills. And right now, the reality in most schools is that mostly nobody is teaching those specific practices explicitly. Hang on, let me push back on that a bit. If I think about my own classroom, I absolutely do teach pupils to read a graph in my science lessons.

I have to. If I don't, they simply can't complete the practicals. I just never called it literacy. And that right there is the entire point. Oh, really? That is the exact revelation this report wants you to have today. You are already doing disciplinary literacy. You are already teaching them how to read like a scientist. I see. The real issue is... You've just never been told that this is yours to own. Because I've never actively named it as a reading practice. To me, it was always just doing science.

Right. So you have never done it deliberately as a reading strategy, and you have never explicitly shared that practice with the department next door. No, definitely not. You are already doing it, but it needs to be explicitly recognized and fully owned by your subject. Okay. Looking at it through that specific lens, it lands very differently. If I am going to own the fact that reading a graph is a science skill, I can see how teaching a pupil to do that is my job, not the English teacher's job down the hall.

But if I am owning the reading, I am guessing I also need the specific language to teach it. How does the report tackle that? That brings us perfectly to a recommendation too, which focuses on targeted vocabulary instruction. And crucially, it means targeted vocabulary instruction in every single subject, not just in English. Targeted vocabulary instruction in every subject. Yes. And the report actually uses a very clear, memorable visual for this. A tree image. A tree image. Picture a massive tree where general literacy forms the roots, and then every single subject's specialist vocabulary and text type forms a completely separate branch on that tree.

General literacy as the roots. keeping the whole foundation anchored in the ground. Yes. And then the specialist vocabulary and the text types functioning as the separate branches extending outwards. You got it. I see the image. It makes sense conceptually, but I mean, I'm going to push you here again. Because if you work in the real world of a busy secondary school, a phrase like targeted vocabulary instruction usually just turns into a useless ten -word starter slide on a whiteboard that nobody actually plans properly. That is a completely fair challenge.

Yeah. And it is a trap a lot of schools fall into. Yeah, we've all seen it. But what's interesting is that the report is actually very honest about that exact pitfall, too. It entirely agrees with your hesitation. Oh, it does. Targeted vocabulary instruction is absolutely not just put 10 keywords on the board and hope for the best. Because throwing 10 words at a pupil at the start of a lesson doesn't actually teach them anything about how to use those words. It doesn't. It is rote memorization at best.

Yes. Instead, the report argues it's about picking the two or three words, just two or three, that actually unlock the whole topic. OK, just two or three. And then crucially, teaching those specific words the way you would teach a complex concept, not the way you would run a Friday spelling list. Teaching them like a full concept, picking the specific words that actually unlock the learning for the pupil. Okay, I understand the strategy now and why it is so much more involved than a starter slide. Yeah.

But I want to go back to the scale of the problem for a moment. Sure. Because 20 billion pounds is incredibly abstract. 120 ,000 pupils is abstract. What is a number that actually drove you to bring this specific research to the table today? I want the number that is about an actual kid. The number about an actual kid. Okay, I can give you that. 25%. A full quarter of the students. Yes. One in four pupils arrives at secondary school, not having reached the expected year six reading standard.

One in four. And what happens to that specific group? of that 25 % of those fewer than one in five go on to get a grade four or above the GCSE English fewer than one in five that is a pupil sitting right in front of you in September of year seven and they are still sitting there in year 11 and they are still behind and if you are listening to this thinking about your own classes that is a science lesson pupil too yes that is not just an english lesson pupil they are sitting in my classroom actively struggling to access my subject for five full years.

That is exactly the core argument here. Now I do need to be completely honest with you here and introduce a strict caveat before we go any further into the practical solutions. Okay. These numbers we are discussing. These are the report's own figures, but they are from 2018. They are not this year's SATs data, and we are absolutely not pretending that they are. Okay, 2018. That is a fair few years back now. So if I'm playing devil's advocate, does the argument still hold with numbers that old?

Genuinely. I cannot point you to a fresher whole cohort figure from a public body that replaces it. I just can't. Right. The scale might have shifted since then. I honestly don't know by how much, and I am not going to sit here and guess for the sake of sounding current. I genuinely appreciate that. Honestly, I think anyone listening would much rather have the honest answer than a made -up new number just to sound trendy. Right. But here's exactly why the age of the data doesn't derail the findings.

While I won't guess on the scale shifting, what I can tell you is that the mechanism the report describes hasn't gone anywhere. The mechanism? The underlying mechanism remains exactly the same today as it was then. So... If I am trying to picture what is happening in a classroom, the text in front of the kids is getting denser, but what we are doing to help them read it isn't changing. Is that the mechanism? You've hit the nail on the head. It is the fact that subject -specific text gets harder while the explicit teaching of how to read it stays completely flat.

That is the mechanism. The text gets harder, but the explicit teaching of how to read that text stays flat. Exactly. Yes. I see exactly why the argument holds, regardless of the exact year of the data. If the science textbook is becoming more complex, but we aren't actively increasing our explicit instruction on how to decode it, the gap is only going to widen for that one in four pupils. Precisely. So to make this whole idea of disciplinary literacy highly practical. to actually tackle that mechanism head on.

Let's look at the same idea, but picture it moving through three rooms in a school setting. Three rooms. OK. Because as you pointed out earlier, disciplinary literacy sounds entirely theoretical until you actually picture it happening in real life. Right. Three rooms. So if we look at the timeline of a student, they have to start with the absolute basics before they ever reach my science lab. Where are we starting? Room one. Room one is primary. This phase is purely foundational. It is the foundational modeling of how to read a diagram or how to read a simple nonfiction text.

Got it. And crucially, this happens before secondary subjects get specialized at all. So, foundational modeling. They are learning the absolute foundational architecture of a diagram or just how to navigate simple nonfiction completely free of the specialized pressures of the separate science or history departments. Exactly. It's building the ground floor. Now, move to room two. Okay, so now they have walked into my room. Your room. In a secondary science lesson, tackling this might just take five minutes. Five minutes focused entirely on how a method actually reads.

How a method reads. Walk me through exactly what that looks like in practice for those five minutes. It means specifically pointing out the passive voice. It means pointing out the sequence words. And it means deliberately pointing out the sentence that tells you what to do, which always comes before the sentence that tells you why you're doing it. Passive voice. Sequence words. The what before the why. Yes. Yes. If you think about it, that is exactly the rigid architecture of a scientific method. And taking just five minutes to explicitly point that out to the pupils, rather than assuming they naturally know how to navigate it, completely changes their ability to access the practical.

Yes. It stops being an invisible barrier. Yeah. Now let's step into room three, a specialist setting. How does disciplinary literacy shift when it looks in there? It is the exact same principle, but it is scaffolded further. In a specialist setting, it might involve a task strip. This breaks a complex instruction down into clear steps. It is symbol supported. Right. But here is the highly critical part. It is still teaching the real reading practice. It is not a simplified substitute for it. It is using the exact same steps a scientist actually uses, just supported differently.

I think that distinction is massive. Yeah, it is not a simplified substitute. You aren't dumbing the science down. You are just providing a different scaffold for the exact same rigorous reading practice. Exactly. So if I'm looking at all three of those rooms, that is three entirely different subjects or settings, completely different phases of education. Yeah. But it is the exact same underlying skill being developed in every single one. It has just never been formally named as belonging to any of them until now. Right. The core skill was always there in the room.

We just need to actively name it and claim it. OK. So here is the exact instruction you can take away from this conversation. Try it today. Try it today. Pick one lesson this week and name out loud the specific way your subject expects a pupil to read. So it's about making the implicit explicit. Naming how to read a graph or naming how to read a source or a method or a word problem. Yes. Name it out loud to the class. And just to clarify, because teachers listening on their commute are incredibly pressed for time and probably dreading another massive workload addition, we are not talking about writing a whole new scheme of work here, are we?

Not at all. Zero extra planning documents required. We are literally talking about one explicit sentence, standing at the front of the lab and saying, in science, we read a method like this. Yeah. Just said explicitly once, instead of just assuming they already know how to do it. Exactly that. Just one explicit sentence. And taking that one seemingly small step leads to a very revealing question for a school. Which is? If a literacy lead walked into your department meeting tomorrow, could they point to one place where your subject's own reading practice is written down and taught, not just expected?

If a literacy lead walked in tomorrow? I mean, I have to admit, looking at my own department, mine couldn't. Not before today, anyway. We expect it constantly, but we don't teach it. That's the reality for a lot of departments. But it can be there now, because that is going to be this week's job. I am committing to making that happen this week. That is exactly the kind of shift this report is aiming for across the whole curriculum. Before we wrap this up and get to the final takeaways, I want to leave everyone listening with a final thought to really mull over today something we didn't explicitly name just now, but builds right off this.

Think about your own department right now. What is the invisible reading skill you constantly expect your pupils to have, but that you have never actually stopped to deliberately teach them? That is the perfect question to take into school today. So let's recap. Three things off the drive today. Number one, low literacy is a whole economy problem. It costs the UK economy 20 billion pounds a year. It is not just an English department line item. Number two, Disciplinary literacy means every single subject has its own specific reading practice.

And the absolute truth is most of us are already doing it. We are just doing it without ever naming it or explicitly teaching it on purpose. And number three, pick one lesson this week and say out loud how your subject actually wants a pupil to read. That is the whole first move. Everything we've discussed is linked on our website. And there is a printable one -pager available for this conversation at TheEducationCommute .co .uk. And while you are on the site, there are two free newsletters there as well.

One is for staff and one is for parents and carers. It uses the exact same evidence we unpacked today, but written specifically for the person reading it. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. Safe trip in. See you at the gates.