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Bullock (1975) Notes on the text
Part 1 Attitudes and standards
Part 2 Language in the early years
Part 3 Reading
Part 4 Language in the middle and secondary years
Part 5 Organisation
Part 6 Reading and language difficulties
Part 7 Resources
Part 8 Teacher education and training
Part 9 The survey
Part 10 Sumary of conclusions and recommendations
Appendix A Witnesses and sources of evidence
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The Bullock Report (1975)
A language for life Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock FBA London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1975
Chapter 18 Children with reading difficulties
18.1 In this chapter we have drawn together some of the issues relating to children in ordinary schools who are experiencing failure with reading. It will be obvious, however, that their difficulties and the provision they need are by no means confined to this part of the Report. In all we have so far said about language and reading there is the insistence, in some places explicit and everywhere implicit, that careful attention should be given to those children who show signs of experiencing particular difficulty. Indeed, the entire sections on language and reading in the early years should be read in association with this chapter. Equally, we have the needs of these children very much in mind in the parts of the Report where we discuss organisation, resources and teacher training. 18.2 Children with reading difficulties are usually described as 'retarded' or 'backward', and the term 'slow learner' is sometimes used as a substitute for the second. A backward reader is generally regarded as one who is below the average for his age (1). Thus, if a ten year old child has a reading age (2) of 9.0 he is backward by twelve months. The notion can also be expressed in terms of a reading quotient. The 1950 Ministry of Education pamphlet gave the critical quotient as 80; below this a child could be considered a backward reader. He may be working to the limit of his capacity and yet register this low score. The retarded reader, on the other hand, is defined as one whose attainments are low in relation to his intelligence. His achievements are not being judged against those of his contemporaries but in relation to his own mental capacity. By these terms some children are backward, some are retarded, and some are both. Thus, the last-named will be achieving below the norm for their age and also below the average for children of similarly low ability. 18.3 This is a necessarily brief account of what is in fact a complicated issue, but it serves to provide a background for what we consider an important qualification of the notion of 'failure'. There is first of all the failure which is legitimate in the sense that the child can see that success is possible but is eluding him. Provided he can be helped to identify and then overcome the causes of his failure the experience is a valid one, for in these terms failure becomes acceptable and manageable. The second sense in which the word can be used is where the child is faced with objectives which are at the time completely beyond his powers. He is unable to understand the causes of his failure, which is inevitable and inescapable. The child's awareness of failure of this kind can have serious consequences in terms of personal feelings, attitudes, expectations and achievement. A very real possibility is that the backward child can also become a retarded one in circumstances where unrealistic achievements are being expected of him. The notion of failure, however defined, should be approached with circumspection. Defeatism on the part of parents or teacher will soon spread to the children themselves. It is more constructive to think and plan in terms of greater progress for all children. The pupil formerly considered as 'failing' will then be seen as one who is making slow progress and who can be helped to improved achievement if certain positive measures are taken. 18.4 It is clear that there are many children leaving infant school who are still finding great difficulty in learning to read and are likely to continue to need special help in the junior school, particularly those summer-born children who may have had only two years of early schooling. While we acknowledge that children vary in the ages at which they are ready for the more formal aspects of learning to read, we do not accept that this stage of readiness should be seen merely as an aspect of maturation, to be patiently awaited. Carefully planned activities will give the child the preparation he needs for the more formal beginnings of reading and writing. We are convinced that a more systematic approach to such preparation would reduce the number of children with reading problems in the junior school. Delay in making even a modest beginning in reading beyond the age of seven puts the child at educational risk, not merely because a great deal of later learning depends on the ability to read, but because the poor reader is less likely to receive skilled attention the older he becomes. A survey (3) carried out by the Inner London Education Authority into the literacy of 31,308 children revealed that 63 per cent of the junior schools had no full-time teacher who 'had received specific/detailed training (i.e. more than a few general lectures) to teach reading at training college or specialist course'. Indeed, fewer than one in eight of the full-time teachers in junior schools had been trained to teach reading. It is significant that in the National Child Development Study a follow-up of eleven year olds surveyed four years earlier revealed that the majority of those who were retarded at seven had fallen behind even further. It is equally clear that the number of children continuing to need help in their secondary school is also considerable. In replying to our questionnaire 13 per cent of secondary schools judged that at least a quarter of their pupils aged twelve required 'special provision' on account of reading and language difficulties. In 10 per cent of the schools the same number of pupils were held to be in similar need at age fourteen. Children in the Isle of Wight (4) who had reading difficulties at the end of their junior school subsequently continued to experience difficulty; the group as a whole made only 10 months' progress in reading during the 28 month period of the follow-up. A further examination of the group at the age of fourteen showed that the majority of children found to have severe reading difficulties in their primary schools continued to lag far behind in reading as they approached the end of their statutory school life. 18.5 The causes of reading failure are no less complex today than they were when Sir Cyril Burt examined London children some 50 years ago. In many cases the cause may be found in the circumstances of a child's upbringing, which restrict his experiences and provide little or no encouragement for him to learn. Children who come from homes where conversation is limited and books unknown are likely to be slower in their linguistic growth and to find greater difficulty in learning to read than those who come from more favoured backgrounds. Some children have limited natural ability, or a sensory defect, particularly hearing, which adversely affects their capacity to develop language. Children of limited mental ability reach their developmental milestones, including those of speech and language, more slowly than normal children. In the Isle of Wight survey it was found that 23.4 per cent of the 'intellectually retarded' children spoke their first words at 25 months of age or later, compared with 2.3 per cent of the normal population. Some children may be anxious or depressed, so that they cannot apply their minds to learning; they may have lost confidence in themselves and in their capacity to learn because they have already failed in school. Lastly, there is a rather smaller group of children who experience a difficulty in learning to read that cannot be accounted for by limited ability or by emotional or extraneous factors. The term 'dyslexic' is commonly applied to these children. We believe that this term serves little useful purpose other than to draw attention to the fact that the problem of these children can be chronic and severe. It is not susceptible to precise operational definition; nor does it indicate any clearly defined course of treatment. Most of the children, however, do find difficulties in auditory and visual discrimination and in associating visual symbols with the sounds they represent, and it has been suggested that these difficulties are caused by delayed maturation of the coordinating processes of the nervous system. A more helpful term to describe the situation of these children is 'specific reading retardation'. This has been defined as 'a syndrome characterised by severe reading difficulties which are not accountable for in terms of low intelligence and which are not explicable merely in terms of the lower end of a normal distribution of reading skills' (5). Given a skilled analysis of the nature of their difficulties, followed by intensive help and support, most of these pupils eventually learn to read, though their spelling may remain idiosyncratic throughout their lives. Arrangements for making this help available to them are discussed in para 18.18. 18.6 The level of a child's intellectual capacity inevitably affects his ability to acquire linguistic skills. But it must be remembered that intelligence itself is a developmental concept, and disadvantaged children brought up in circumstances which fail to nourish intellect can make considerable gains if placed in a favourable learning environment. It has been claimed (6) that increments are possible not merely during the early years but at any time during the years of a child's development. For a teacher to know that a certain slow reader is of high intelligence may usefully lead him to expect and encourage a higher attainment in the child. In contrast, the knowledge that a child is of below average intelligence may lead to an acceptance of below average reading standards. Yet many such children do become better than average readers, and one of the factors at work may well be positive expectations on the part of the teacher. The relationship between reading success and intelligence can be more easily identified with averages than with individual children. One would be justified in expecting that a group of children whose average intelligence quotient was higher than that of another group would have higher average reading scores. But in the first group there would almost certainly be some poor readers, while in the second there would be children with reading attainments above the level their intelligence might have suggested. The divergences in each case would represent the other factors in operation, for example, motivation, parental interest, perseverance, and the presence or absence of appropriate teaching. As a group of psychologists expressed it in a paper submitted in evidence: 'If children are apparently unable to learn, we should assume that we have not as yet found the right way to teach them'. Slow progress in reading is undoubtedly characteristic of children with limited natural endowments, and to expect their reading progress to be at the same rate as that of their more able peers would be unrealistic. However, with good teaching they should be able to make steady, continuous progress throughout their school lives. 18.7 The close association between retardation in reading and emotional disorders has been frequently noted, and has been referred to in much of the evidence we have received. It has been pointed out (7) that 'over-reacting' types of behaviour disturbance become increasingly severe up to the age of nine - i.e. during a critical period for the acquisition of reading and writing skills. Boys retarded in reading are more than twice as likely as other children to show anxiety or lack of concentration, and are three times as likely to experience irrational fears and anxieties; poor readers as a whole are almost four times as likely to show signs of maladjustment in school as children whose performance in reading is normal. In the Isle of Wight study a third of the children retarded in reading exhibited antisocial behaviour; similarly, of the group of children identified as antisocial over a third were at least 28 months retarded in their reading. Though the exact nature of the association between reading failure and emotional disorder is unclear, the association is so marked that 'one might suppose that the relation is in most cases reciprocal. From the teachers' point of view, this suggests that emotional or behavioural disturbance is at any age a danger signal that learning failure may follow; similarly, failure to learn, for whatever reason, is a cue for action before it has emotional consequences of a lasting and compounding sort' (8). 18.8 It is now over half a century since Burt observed that backwardness and poverty were closely interrelated. A few years ago, when Wiseman carried out his survey for the Plowden Committee (9), the association was found to be with psychological poverty - lack of books, low parental interest, and a linguistic expectation at variance with the language used in the school. Recent investigations carried out by a number of LEAs in underprivileged industrial areas in the North West revealed a disturbingly high incidence of reading retardation at the age of eight. In some of the schools serving these areas almost a quarter of the age group had 'low reading ability'; in a few schools in rehousing areas, where parental interest was minimal and vandalism rife, the number of children with 'very limited' reading ability rose to 40 per cent, and the number of non-readers to as many as one in five. We have discussed in Chapter 2 some of the recent studies that have confirmed the relationship between low attainment and home circumstances. One of these was the first report of the National Child Development Study, which showed that at seven years of age 'the chances of an unskilled manual worker's child being a poor reader are six times greater than those of a professional worker's child ...; the chances of a Social Class V child being a non-reader are 15 times greater than those of a Social Class I child'. Put in more general terms, 'the difference between children from Social Classes I and II and those from Social Class V is equivalent to nearly 17 months of reading age'. Even more startling is the evidence that has recently become available from the follow-up study of the same group of children four years later, which shows that their retardation at age eleven, so far from being alleviated, has actually increased: 'the differences between Social Classes I and II and V was about 27 months compared to about 17 months at the age of seven'. This evidence is in accord with the findings of earlier surveys such as those of Douglas (10) and others, whose later work indicates that retardation of this kind often persists until the end of a child's school days. There can therefore be no doubt that active intervention is needed at an early age to compensate as far as possible for the cumulative effects of social handicap. 18.9 Among the factors which contribute to retardation in reading the local authorities and the schools themselves have not escaped criticism. Present facilities for helping children with difficulties in reading and in the use of language have been described as 'sorely inadequate' by some of our witnesses. We believe there to be some truth in this assertion, supported as it is by the findings of a number of surveys and investigations. There are undoubted differences in standards of reading and language in schools serving very similar residential areas, as the Newsom Report showed (11), and startling improvements in reading levels have been claimed as a result of a determined effort to improve standards. Some local authorities have augmented the resources of those schools with the largest numbers of poor readers, and by so doing have helped them to bring about significant improvements. On the other hand, it has to be acknowledged that there are many schools where these children are exposed to the unsettling effect of rapid teacher turnover or are taught by inexperienced teachers. 18.10 The arrangements for providing 'remedial education' vary greatly: from remedial classes or withdrawal groups within an individual school to peripatetic advisory services, area classes, or specialised help in remedial centres. How effective are these measures? This would seem at first sight to be a relatively easy question to answer, but the results of efforts to do so over a number of years have proved controversial, not least on account of the many different types of provision and approach, and the varied criteria for selecting the children to be given help. It might be expected that some broad consensus of opinion would emerge to indicate whether or not 'remedial' treatment is likely to be successful; but the evidence from research is neither unanimous nor particularly encouraging. One of the earliest studies (12) proved promising: children who had hitherto made little or no progress in reading began to do so when given remedial teaching. The average gain during the six monthly period was 1.9 years for the 64 children for whom there were complete results. Collins (13), in a now well known monograph, reviewed the progress of groups of children who had received such education at the Remedial Education Centre at Birmingham University Institute of Education. He, too, found that the immediate effects of remedial treatment appeared to have been beneficial; the children who completed the course made an average gain of two years reading age in one year one month, and the behaviour difficulties of rather more than half of them improved. But a subsequent experiment gave rise to doubts. Two groups of children were given remedial education, one in the Remedial Centre and one elsewhere, and the results were compared with those of a control group who received only normal teaching in their ordinary class. In the short term, gains of the remedial groups were shown to be limited: 'only in the mechanical aspects of word recognition were treated children markedly different from controls'. Even more significant was the finding that 'the long term effects of treatment were negligible'. Later studies (14) have tended to confirm these results: children who received remedial education showed considerable short-term gains, particularly in the more mechanical aspects of reading such as word recognition, but this progress was not sustained. 18.11 In seeking to discover the reasons for these seemingly depressing results, those responsible for the studies have drawn attention to the difficulties of making a just evaluation of measures which vary so greatly in approach and resources. Remedial education can consist of an hour or two a week in a centre or clinic or a daily period in school. It can be closely related to the rest of the child's work in school or it can be entirely dissociated from it, even to the extent of using a different orthography. It can range from unskilled treatment, based on inadequate understanding of individual differences, to expert help from a teacher with specialised training and long experience. We believe the discouraging findings reported by most research workers should not lead to a conviction that all such measures are bound to be ineffective. The success of these measures in some schools is there to be seen, as we noted earlier. When attention is focused upon children who do learn to read it is apparent that many successful readers overcome difficulties which have been considered important as causes of failure. Put another way, although a number of children in difficulty do have below average test intelligence, some degree of hearing impairment, or indeterminate laterality, the same may be said of large numbers of successful readers. There are, however, certain factors which are essential if success is to be broad and lasting. 18.12 (1) The particular nature of each child's difficulties must be seen in relation to his whole linguistic development. There is no mystique about remedial education, nor are its methods intrinsically different from those employed by successful teachers anywhere. The essence of remedial work is that the teacher is able to give additional time and resources to adapting these methods to the individual child's needs and difficulties. (2) Fundamental is the teacher's ability to create warm and sympathetic individual relationships with the pupils, so that they are encouraged to learn through the stimulus of success. Again, it is not a question of devising special 'remedial methods', but of applying good teaching in such a way that failure is replaced by a sense of achievement, with all that this means for a child's confidence and self respect. This is particularly important with young and immature children, who are the most easily discouraged by failure; for them it is more than ever important not only that they achieve a high rate of success, but that this is reinforced by the constant encouragement and approval of the teacher. From this it should be evident that remedial work is not work for the inexperienced or indifferent teacher, but for the one who combines a high level of teaching skill with an understanding of the children's emotional and developmental needs. (3) Remedial help in learning to read should wherever possible be closely related to the rest of a child's learning. Children who are in need of special help sometimes have their weaknesses exposed by the very efforts designed to remedy them, particularly if these result in fewer opportunities to achieve success in other activities, such as art, crafts, drama, and music. This can be particularly true of older children for whom a monotonous and prolonged emphasis on remedial work in the basic skills occupies a major part of the time. Where this is at the expense of other parts of the curriculum which may offer them greater chances of success the policy can be self-defeating. (4) There should be every effort to involve parents and help them to understand the nature of their children's difficulties. Evidence from the Educational Priority experiment (15) and from schools themselves shows that lack of interest on the part of the parents can be too readily assumed. The more the interest of parents can be aroused, the more they are likely to play a constructive part in helping their children at home. This is a matter we have dealt with at length in Chapter 5 and referred to elsewhere in the Report. 18.13 After stating these general principles we can look more closely at the organisation of additional remedial help in the school. In the primary school patterns of organisation within the classroom can go far to reduce the likelihood of failure. Opportunities for cooperative and individual work allow the varying requirements of children to be fulfilled. But there inevitably comes a time when one teacher, however skilled, cannot alone provide for the wide range of individual needs, including those of children whose difficulties call for additional help if they are not to fall still further behind. In some primary schools, where the ratio of staff to children is particularly favourable, the responsibility for giving help to these children may lie with every teacher. This arrangement certainly avoids the danger of dissociating reading from the rest of the child's learning, but it may deny him the special help he needs unless all the teachers are equally capable of providing it. The most common arrangement is for children in need of additional help to be taken separately by another teacher, sometimes by the head. Our survey revealed that 69 per cent of the teachers taking 'remedial' or withdrawal groups in the primary schools were part-timers. Part-time teachers used for this purpose include peripatetic remedial teachers, highly skilled in the teaching of reading and with additional training to equip them for the task. However, the indications are that there are many part-time teachers who have no recent experience of teaching reading and no in-service training to prepare them. There were 22,762 pupils in the 3,816 groups in our sample, which means an average of six pupils per group, and of the 'remedial' six and nine year olds 75 per cent were in groups of up to ten. In our visits to schools we talked to several class teachers who found this kind of arrangement unsatisfactory. Some would rather the part-time teacher were used to release them to give extra help to the children in need of it. Others believed that the part-timer should work alongside the regular teacher, who knows the child's background and can ensure that special help with reading is not divorced from the rest of his work. These are approaches with which more schools might experiment, bearing in mind the essential condition that the teachers concerned should find it a congenial way of working. This is not to say that one system should simply be substituted for another. In some circumstances there may well be much in favour of the part-time or peripatetic teacher withdrawing individuals or small groups on occasions. What we are suggesting is a flexibility which permits a variety of practice. At present the part-time teacher and the class teacher often work independently, and few schools have a member of staff with special responsibility for coordinating the work and advising. 18.14 This question of the relationship between remedial help and the general curriculum is of the greatest importance. Children who are taught in special groups are sometimes returned to general class work without the level of reading competence they need to enable them to make independent progress. Through lack of support they fail to continue the rate of progress they had made in the remedial group. Closer liaison between remedial teachers and class teacher is essential if the progress is to be maintained. There is, however, much more to it than that. We have argued elsewhere in the Report that in the primary school every teacher should consciously plan a reading programme which is designed to cater for the various levels of ability within the class. In our view this should be a school's explicit policy whether or not it decides to give additional special help by a withdrawal system. When a child comes to spend all his time with his class he should have the right kind of reading programme to take him on from that point. 18.15 In secondary schools the problem is more complex. Where there is a specialist organisation, or where grouping by ability is not favoured, it is unrealistic to expect every teacher to find the time or to possess the necessary knowledge and experience to help pupils who are retarded in language and reading. In about two thirds of the schools which replied to our questionnaire children were withdrawn from their regular class group either regularly or occasionally for additional help in reading; in the remaining cases help was given in special classes or 'remedial departments'. The first of these practices has the disadvantage that the remedial reading tuition is separated from the remainder of the pupil's learning. On the other hand it has the virtue of allowing the pupil to take his place with his peers for the greater part of the week. This kind of arrangement seems to us to be particularly suitable for those whose reading is at a lower level than that of their general ability to learn and who are likely to profit from this specific and intensive tuition. With these pupils the separation can work effectively, but we recommend that the tuition should be related to the rest of the pupil's learning where possible. We came across one way of doing this in what the school called a 'support option', where an extraction system was being used in close cooperation with the main teaching. Fourth and fifth year pupils with reading difficulties followed the normal option timetable but took one subject fewer than their peers. In the time thus released they attended small group sessions for 'support'. The teacher responsible for this had the task of helping the pupils prepare for their work in various subjects, looking over chapters of textbooks and helping them with their writing. One pupil who was to take part in a play reading later in the day was being helped with his part by the support teacher. We should like to see more initiatives of this kind, which we believe have considerable promise. It has also been suggested (16) that if retarded readers are able to receive counselling they regain confidence and show an increased capacity to learn. This may consist of nothing more than regular informal conversation with sympathetic adults, not necessarily teachers. We feel that more use could be made of this kind of voluntary help, provided that control remains in the hands of the teachers. The second practice, namely the allocation of pupils to special classes or 'remedial' departments, allows the teaching of reading to be integrated with the special curriculum that has been devised for the group of slow learners, making it possible to give both specific and incidental attention to reading and language development. We do not favour this practice when it results in the pupils being separated for most of the week, but it does seem a practicable arrangement for some pupils for part of it, say between one and two thirds of the time. These classes are frequently called 'remedial' but are better thought of as slow learners' groups. There should be close cooperation between the teachers in charge of them and their colleagues with whom the pupils spend the remainder of the time. Consultation and exchange of information can ensure that the work and methods in all areas of the curriculum are suited to the pupils' particular needs. A third form of provision, though far less common, is for remedial specialists to join the pupils in their normal specialist lessons, such as history and geography. They act as tutors and counsellors in close association with the subject teacher to enable each pupil to keep up with and take a full part in the class work. This is another initiative which we believe should receive every encouragement and which more schools might consider. 18.16 Given the widely differing circumstances of secondary schools, we do not believe it possible to prescribe a particular pattern of organisation as the best, but we are convinced that whatever pattern is adopted it will prove successful only if it is based upon the principles we have already set out. Thus, additional teaching assistance should always be related to a child's interests and as far as possible to the rest of his learning. It should not isolate him unnecessarily from his class or group, nor prevent him from taking part in those aspects of the curriculum which he finds particularly satisfying and enjoyable. Additional teaching resources and other supportive services (such as the school psychological service) should be made available in sufficient strength to enable the great majority of such children to receive help within, or at least in close association with, their normal learning situation. 18.17 In many secondary schools, work with 'slow learners' seems unhappily to rank low in the list of priorities. These children commonly attract less than their fair share of resources, and their educational needs appear to be inadequately recognised. Their real need is a curriculum designed as much to develop their strengths and extend their interests as to remedy their weaknesses. It is not always easy to distinguish the needs of individual children, but failure to differentiate between their educational requirements is the source of much bewilderment, frustration and misdirected effort. It is no part of our brief to consider in any detail the total curricular needs of slow learners, which are at present the subject of detailed investigation elsewhere. Nevertheless, we are convinced that their learning must be based on what seems to them interesting and real, and must provide them with opportunities to achieve 'something in their school lives which they can look on with pride and which they ... know others can look on with respect' (17). Otherwise, there will be little on which to base realistic and effective language work and reading. It is important that general responsibility for these children should lie with a senior member of staff who is able to coordinate all the school's resources on their behalf. Where the school has a remedial department its head should have the status to enable him to carry out this role. Where a different form of organisation exists the teacher responsible should have comparable authority. Whoever exercises this responsibility should work in close consultation with the heads of other departments. 18.18 It will be apparent from what we have said above that we find ourselves in agreement with the view expressed by the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee (18) that the great majority of children with reading difficulties should be given the help they need in their own schools. However, as we have remarked, there are some children who experience a difficulty in learning to read that cannot be accounted for by limited ability or by emotional or extraneous factors, i.e. the children often referred to as 'dyslexic'. These pupils are likely to need more intensive treatment than the ordinary school can provide, and this may best be given in a remedial centre or reading clinic, a facility which should be available in every authority. They should be able to offer, or at least should have access to, a comprehensive diagnostic service, calling as necessary upon the skills of doctor and psychologist to complement the skills of an experienced staff of teachers. Ideally, they should not only provide skilled diagnosis, assessment and treatment for the comparatively small number of children with severe difficulties who attend them, but should also offer an advisory service for teachers in the schools. Their staff would be closely involved in the operation and follow-up of the screening procedure and in the provision of courses of the kind mentioned in the last chapter. They could also play a valuable role in evaluating books and other materials for backward readers, in disseminating information, and in making their experience available to teachers generally. In all these activities they would work closely with the adviser with special responsibility for children experiencing learning difficulties, and through him would be supported by the English advisory group advocated in Chapter 16. We regard the support of a specialist adviser as essential, and recommend that every authority should make such an appointment where one does not exist. 18.19 In conclusion we feel it important to single out again for emphasis the fact that the majority of the pupils who leave school with an inadequate command of reading come from areas of social and economic depression. The problem is more than one of teaching reading, and a combined effort by the social services, teachers and administrators is required over the whole period of a child's school life. One thing emerges clearly; the longer reading failure is allowed to persist the more difficult it is to overcome. Preventive measures are likely to be far more productive than remedial ones. It is essential to prevent early failure from becoming a source of emotional disorder for the pupil. Whatever the causes of failure may be, the chances of future improvement are impaired when a pupil becomes nervous, dispirited, over-anxious or alienated. It would be unrealistic to expect that conditions for learning will ever be ideal and there will always be children who for various reasons fall behind. But a very great deal can be done to prevent reading disability by raising the quality of teaching generally and by giving skilled individual help before a sense of failure has led the child to lose confidence. As Sir Cyril Burt once observed: 'Never let the child lose heart - for once he has lost heart he has lost everything'. References 1. This concept appears simple but can be misleading if taken at face value. It has rightly been pointed out that 18 months' backwardness at the age of eight is more serious than 18 months' backwardness at fourteen. There has also been criticism of the practice of assessing achievement by comparing children with others of the same age. For example, 'Comparing a child's attainment with that of his contemporaries implies that potentially every pupil can reach a level of educational achievement commensurate with his chronological age. But this is not the case. Since about ten per cent of children are intellectually dull, they cannot by definition achieve the same standard as the majority of their contemporaries'. (ML Kellmer Pringle The backward child: dull or retarded Times Educational Supplement: 12 October 1956). 2. See References to Chapter 2 for discussion of the notion of reading age. 3. Literacy Survey Inner London Education Authority: 1968. 4. Rutter M, Tizard J, Whitmore K Education, Health, and Behaviour Longman: 1970. 5. Rutter M and Yule W Specific Reading Retardation in The Review of Special Education ed. L Mann and D Sabatino. Buttonwood Farms Inc: 1973. 6. Clarke ADB and Clarke AM Consistency and Variability in the Growth of Human Characteristics in Advances in Educational Psychology ed. WD Wall and VP Varma. ULP: 1972. 7. Scott DH, Marston NC, Bouchard SJ Behaviour Disturbance in Children University of Guelph: 1970. 8. Wall WD The Problem Child in School in London Educational Review Vol. 2, No. 2. 9. Children and their Primary Schools Vol. 2 Research and Surveys. HMSO: 1967. 10. Douglas JWB The Home and the School MacGibbon and Kee: 1964. 11. Half Our Future Report of the Central Advisory Council. HMSO: 1963. 12. Birch LB The Remedial Treatment of Reading Disability Educational Review: 1948. 13. Collins JE The Effects of Remedial Education Oliver and Boyd: 1961. 14. Cashdan A and Pumfrey PD Some Effects of the Remedial Teaching of Reading Educational Research; 11, 2: 1969. Cashdan A, Pumfrey PD, and Lunzer EA Children Receiving Remedial Teaching in Reading Educational Research; 13, 2: 1971. 15. Midwinter E Setting up the Triangle Times Educational Supplement: 27 June 1973. 16. Lawrence D Counselling of Retarded Readers by Non-Professionals Educational Research, 15: 1972. 17. Enquiry No. 1 Schools Council. HMSO: 1968. 18. Children with Specific Reading Difficulties HMSO: 1972. 
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