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Headteacher's warning over literacy skills

Wednesday, 9 July 2025 13:45

By Ted Peskett - Local Democracy Reporter X @TedPeskettNews

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Literacy and numeracy problems have increased among children according to the head of a Barry primary school where many entrants are non-verbal.

Luke Tweedley, the headteacher of Oak Field Primary, told Vale of Glamorgan Council’s Start Well scrutiny committee that more than 90% of three-year-olds coming to them are below the expected level for literacy and numeracy.

Two years ago, a Welsh Government report recognised the numeracy and literacy challenge schools face and said the Covid-19 pandemic played a big part in creating it.

One member of the committee, Cllr Helen Payne, asked Mr Tweedley at a meeting on Monday, whether poor literacy and numeracy rates were a regular occurrence in schools now.

He said: “I think it’s definitely increased since Covid and there could be a whole host of factors that are at play."

“At our school, and I know…schools within our cluster, they’ve seen an increase in the needs of children as they start with us.”

The headteacher went on to say that despite this challenge children at Oak Field go on to make “really good progress with us” and that this is down to creating “language-rich environments”.

Mr Tweddley added: “[This is] surrounding and immersing children in language, really good role models."

“Role modelling a range of language which is appropriate for them and once you develop those language models in children the children are modelling to each other."

“What we’ve started to do before children start with us [is]…language and play sessions."

“We have them come in and they work with our classroom teacher so we allow our nursery teacher to come out and work with parents and we send home story sacks with puppets and we show the parents how to use them."

“We are trying to encourage the use of stories and talking to the children and in some cases putting down the phone."

“Putting down the doom-scrolling and maintaining eye contact and showing them even non-verbal queues, showing them what emotion looks like in a positive way.”

Another Welsh Government report, published earlier this year, shows that there was an improvement in attainment for numeracy assessments among year three and year six pupils for 2023-24 compared with 2022-23.

Overall for numeracy assessments, there was lower attainment in 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 relative to 2018-19.

The data showed a similar pattern for English reading assessments with attainment being higher in 2023-24 for year three and six pupils compared with the previous year.

Mr Tweedley told the committee: “We are doing our best to work with families before they arrive [with] us and I know that Flying Start are doing a huge amount of work trying to work with families as well."

“Once the children are in that environment…. [they] do make really good progress but they might not leave us at the expected level for their age.

“That’s because they’ve come in below the expected level. It’s really hard to play catch-up.”

In April, Estyn inspectors praised Oak Field Primary for its 'welcoming...and nurturing' environment and "a caring and inclusive culture where pupils and families feel safe, happy, and valued".

But the report also called for improvements on oral education and warned that Welsh language skills among pupils were "underdeveloped".

Additional reporting by the Bro Radio Newsroom

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