THOUSANDS of children are starting secondary school unable to read or write properly because of poor teaching, school inspectors have found.

One in three primary school lessons are still no better than satisfactory despite the Government’s commitment to improve standards, Ofsted reported yesterday.

Boys in particular have shown little improvement and they fall further behind girls in test results as they grow older.

The inspectors said “urgent” action is required to help pupils who start secondary education without reaching the levels of English skills expected of their age group. National test results show that about one in five 11-year-olds do not reach the standard expected of their age group in English. The inspectors found that schools which teach using traditional phonics “systematically and rapidly” from an early age, have the greatest success in helping children to learn to read and write.

Ofsted’s study of the state of English teaching over the past five years found that pupils did not know how to improve because the quality of teachers’ assessment was “consistently weak”.

Miriam Rosen, Ofsted’s director of education, said: “We are concerned, particularly because it will interfere with their ability to access the rest of the curriculum.” Standards in English continued to rise over the five-year period that the report covered, she said. “However, they have yet to reach the Government’s targets.”

The Ofsted report concluded: “There is an urgent need for schools to improve the literacy skills of pupils who enter year seven (the first year of secondary school) with attainment below Level 4 (the standard expected of 11-year-olds).”

Despite significant improvements in teaching between 2000 and 2005, 30 per cent of all primary English lessons are “no better than satisfactory”, Ofsted said.

Jacqui Smith, the Schools Minister and a former teacher, said: “Let’s get this in context. When Ofsted say that 30 per cent of lessons are no better than satisfactory this does not mean that these lessons are failing — it means they are meeting the expected standard but that there is room for improvement.”

The inspectors findings on the success of phonicscome just months ahead of a Government review into the way reading is taught in primary schools. It is expected to examine whether more traditional methods could be used to raise standards.

Jim Rose, a former director of inspection at Ofsted, was commissioned to report in January whether blending the sounds and shapes of individual letters instead of recognising whole words, would help children learn to read more easily.

Since the 1960s, the “whole language” method of learning has predominated in most English primary schools.

The Government embarked on the study after a seven-year pilot of children in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, showed that by age 11, pupils who had been taught throughout primary school to read with synthetic phonics, were three years ahead of their peers.

Nick Gibb, the shadow Schools minister welcomed the findings and called for all primary schools to employ the more traditional teaching method.

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