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The European Declaration of the Right to Literacy –

How can we ensure

that it is implemented?

Prof. Dr. Renate Valtin

renate.valtin/at/gmail.com

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Speech makes us human – literacymakes us civilized (Olson 1977)

Structure of my presentation:

• The importance of literacy. Literacy is not only just a technique to decipher written texts but a competenceessential for life long learning and cultural and political participation.

• Why do we need a (European) declaration?

• The declaration: Literacy as a human right and 11 preconditions

• Good practice examples

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The importance of literacy

People who cannot read properly encounter severe difficulties in modern society. They fail in school, have difficulties finding a satisfying job, risk poverty and social exclusion.

This increases the risk of poverty and social exclusion and limits numerous opportunities for cultural participation, lifelong learning and personal growth.

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The Literacy Challenge in Europe

It is alarming that one in five 15-year-olds and nearly55 million adults lack basic literacy skills, and evenmore alarming that in the last 15 years there hasbeen little improvement in the levels of literacy.

European Commission 2016: “When it comes to progress towardsthe 2020 benchmark of less than 15% low achievers, the EU as awhole is seriously lagging behind and has taken a step backward,compared to the PISA 2012 results (reading: 19.7%, +1.9 percentagepoints; Low achievers cannot successfully complete basic tasks thatare required in modern societies and the consequences of thisunderachievement, if it is not tackled successfully, will be eminentand costly in the long run for them individually, but also for societiesas a whole.”

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European Policy Answer I: Establishing of a

EU High Level Group of Experts on Literacy 2012

Our vision for a literate Europe:All Europe will be literate.

Radically improved literacy will boost

innovation, prosperity and cohesion in

society as well as the well-being,

social participation and employability

of all citizens.

Member States will view it as their legal

obligation to provide all the support

necessary to realise our vision, and this

support will include all ages.

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European Policy Answer II: ELINET was created

to put the Report´s Vision into Practice.The EU funded the European Literacy Policy Network ELINET: a

group of 78 literacy experts – researchers and practitioners,

professionals, volunteers and policymakers – from 28 European

countries, who developed a wide range of theoretical concepts and

practical solutions to foster literacy development from cradle to grave.

A task force of ELINET outlined a European Declaration of Literacy as a

basic right.

Members of the Task Force were: Renate Valtin (chair), Viv Bird, Greg

Brooks, Bill Brozo, Christine Clement, Simone Ehmig, Christine Garbe,

Maurice de Greef, Ulrike Hanemann, Kees Hammink, David Mallows,

Fabio Nascimbeni, Sari Sulkunen, Giorgio Tamburlini.

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Why do we need a literacy declaration?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed in 1948 and sets out, for the first time, that fundamental human rights are universally protected.

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Why do we need a literacy declaration?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed in 1948 and sets out, for the first time, that fundamental human rights are universally protected.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of

working hours.8

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Why do we need a literacy declaration?

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration deals witheducation but is too unspecific with regard toliteracy:

• “(1) Everyone has the right to education…

• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of thehuman personality…”

Literacy has been recognized as a human right for over50 years in several international declarations andinitiatives. Since its creation, UNESCO has promotedliteracy as a right: 1975 Persepolis Declaration, 1997Hamburg Declaration, 2006-2015 Literacy Initiative forEmpowerment (LIFE), with a focus on those countriesthat face the biggest literacy challenges, mainly in Africaand Asia.

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European Declaration of the Right to Literacy (January 2016)Everyone in Europe has the right to

acquire literacy. EU Member States,

candidate and associate States should

ensure that residents of all ages,

regardless of social class, religion,

ethnicity and gender, are provided

with the necessary resources and

opportunities to develop sufficient

and sustainable literacy skills and

knowledge in order to effectively

understand and use written

communication in print and digital

media.

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http://www.eli-net.eu/about-us/literacy-declaration/

• The long version of the declaration provides more

details, includes recommendations and examples for

stakeholders how to realize these conditions.

• The short version of the declaration is available in 22

languages on the ELINET website, together with a video

clip in English.

• Literacy has a negative impact on a wide range of social

outcomes and the problem of poor literacy cannot be

resolved by educators alone. Instead, collaboration is

required among a wide range of groups and across

different policy areas. Therefore the declaration identifies

11 conditions.

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11 conditions required to put the rightto literacy into practice

1. Young children are encouraged at home in their literacyacquisition.

2. Parents receive support in helping their children’s languageand literacy acquisition.

3. Affordable high-quality preschool or kindergarten fosterschildren’s language and emergent literacy development.

4. High-quality literacy instruction for children, adolescents and

adults is regarded as a core task of all educational institutions. .

5. All teachers receive effective initial teacher education andprofessional development in literacy teaching in order to bewell prepared for their demanding tasks.

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11 conditions required to put the right to literacy into practice

6. Digital competence is promoted across all age groups.

7. Reading for pleasure is actively promoted and encouraged.

8. Libraries are accessible and well resourced.

9. Children and young people who struggle with literacy receiveappropriate specialist support.

10. Adults are supported to develop the literacy skills necessary forthem to participate fully in society.

11. Policy-makers, professionals, parents and communities worktogether to ensure equal access to literacy by closing the gaps insocial and educational levels.

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Implementation of the Right toLiteracy: Good practice examples

For the ELINET project more than 20 researchers and practitioners cooperated in developing the EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF GOOD PRACTICE in Raising Literacy Levels of Children, Adolescents and Adults, 2016

http://www.eli-net.eu/fileadmin/ELINET/Redaktion/user_upload/European_Framework_of_Good_Practice1.pdf

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Recommandations and bestpractice examples in 3 areas

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Creating a literate

environment

Raise thequality ofteaching

Ensureparticipation

inclusion, equity

The primary objective is to increase literacy motivation and

engagement by encouraging and supporting reading and writing for

pleasure.

• Stimulate and support the family

• Books and other materials need to be available

• Free access to well equipped libraries

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Recommandations and goodpractice examples

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Creating a literate

environment

Raise thequality ofteaching

Ensureparticipation,

inclusion, equity

• High quality and accessible preschool education for all children.

• A coherent literacy curriculum with the focus on critical literacy.

• Tailored support for students

• Teacher education, recruitment and professional development (Every

teacher is a literacy teacher)

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Recommandations and goodpractice examples

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Creating a literate

environment

Raise thequality ofteaching

Ensureparticipation

inclusion, equity

There are four main literacy achievement gaps

that Europe must address:

Socio-economicgap

Migrantgap

Gendergap Digital

gap

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INCREASING PARTICIPATION, INCLUSION AND EQUITY

• As international literacy surveys such as PIRLS, PISA and PIACC demonstrate in all European countries there are, to a greater or lesser degree, gaps in achievement between different groups. Of particular concern are the social gap and the migrant gap

• Countries vary in the size of the gaps (Finland has a minor gap in SES than Germany), demonstrating that it is possible to minimize these gaps.

• To close or minimize these gaps is one of the biggest literacy challenges in Europe.

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SES Migration Language GenderSco

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Performance Gaps - Socio-economic Status

(SES), Migration, Language Spoken at Home

and Gender - Finland & EU Average (PISA

2009, 2012) Finland

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Closing the gaps –Supporting persons at risk

To achieve fairer and more inclusive participation in literacy learning we need to close these gaps by supporting children, adolescents and adults “at risk”.

Groups at risk in their for literacy acquisition are

• children from disadvantaged homes

• students with migrant background or whose home language is not the language of instruction

• male students from low SES/migrant families or

• students with “special educational needs” or learning disabilities (differences in terminology between countries).

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Closing the social and migrant gaps: Different stakeholders are in charge

• Healthcare

• Family Programmes

• Preschools

• Schools: Tailored support for slow learners

• Teacher training

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Monitoring of children’s healthy growth and developmentGood practice example: Neuvola (Support Centres), Finland: The child health care services provided in Neuvola include:

• at least 15 medical checkups before school age, concerning: height, weight, posture (at school age), and most importantly for the literacy development, vision, hearing, neurological-cognitive development and psychosocial development and health.

• Treatments usually include various multiprofessionalinterventions, planned in cooperation with medical staff and the family.

• Although Neuvola services are voluntary, they are global and reach approximately 99,5 % of the children in each age cohort (and 99,7 % of pregnant mothers).

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Family: reading to children

PIRLS 2011: On European average only 58.4% of parents read often to their children before the beginning of primary school.

The benefits of reading to children:

• it helps them to develop their vocabulary,

• to love books and reading and

• become familiar with the elaborated language of books and other genres of written language,

• provides them with access to imaginative worlds, places, and perspectives,

• enlarges their knowledge,

• builds emotional bonds with their parents.

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Family literacy programmes

Recommendation: Develop campaigns and programmes that offer resources, support and reading volunteers to disadvantaged parents and pupils in the context of family literacy programmes.

Good practice examples

• Germany: Hamburg Family Project (FLY) is targeted at migrant parents in disadvantaged districts with the aim to give mothers the skills and confidence they need to engage in literacy activities with their children, including helping them with their schoolwork.

• Berlin: ‘District mothers’ (‘Stadtteilmütter’) are immigrants themselves and go into immigrant families not only to support literacy but also to give information about essential services such as health systems, social welfare, and the school system.

• More examples from Italy s. eli-net.eu

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MOCEP (MOTHER CHILD EDUCATION PROGRAM)

• MOCEP (developed in 1993) is a home-based and low-cost early childhood education and care (ECE) and adult education/literacy development programme in Turkey. It targets children most at risk of being excluded from receiving quality early childhood services and their mothers

• The programme is implemented over 25 weeks in the form of structured weekly group meetings and home visits with mothers conducted by trained group leaders and a weekly home-based curriculum for the child implemented by mothers.

• Longterm benefits: children achieved higher scores in intelligence and general aptitude tests, were more successful academically and continued their schooling for a longer period of time.

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Closing the gaps:High quality preschool education

Investing in preschool is recognised as a key factor in developing early language and literacy skills, as well as overall child development, and in improving readiness to learn when starting school (OECD: Starting Strong 2017)

Recommendations:

• Make preschool education free or affordable so that economically disadvantaged families do not miss out

• Provide language support so that each child entering school speaks the language of instruction

• Develop a curriculum focused on language development throughplay with an emphasis on language, psychomotoric and socialdevelopment, and emerging literacy skills

• Better qualification and salary for preschool teachers

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School level: Features of good practice for struggling literacy learners

• Legislation ensures a legal right to support for struggling literacy learners.

• Support for struggling literacy learners is based on high-quality screening and assessment tools.

• A teacher specialising in literacy is easily available for guaranteed, early, in-class support.

• Programmes for struggling learners are tailored according to their needs and may include explicit training in phonics, a strong focus on phonological decoding and word-level work as well as reading comprehension, and supported and independent reading and writing of progressively more difficult texts.

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Whole School Safety Net ‒ Cygnaeus Elementary School 6‒12 years old; ~400 pupils Turku/Åbo Finland

• screening and assessment of all pupils starting in grade 1 by special education teachers

• results in database, analyzed, and shared with the teachers to build on in classroom work

• information at whole-school, grade, classroom and individual pupil levels.

• not for grading or ranking, but for improving the quality of teaching

Example provided by Ann-Sofie Selin

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Literacy instruction: early andtailored support

Reading Recovery (England) is a school-based early literacy intervention

designed to accelerate the reading

of the lowest attaining 5-6 year olds.

The intervention consists of a 20 week course of daily 30 minute lessons with individual children and builds upon intensive teacher professional learning.

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Reciprocal Reading(Project in East London)• a whole-class comprehension

intervention that uses a dialogic

teaching approach.

Teachers receive initial training in:

• The pedagogy of Reciprocal Teaching

• Developing subjective knowledge

• Developing classroom talk practices

Students

• work in groups of around five on the same text

• engage in prediction, questioning, seeking clarification and summarising.

Although teachers are involved initially, they later hand over responsibility to the group of students, allowing them to develop a dialogue around their understanding of the text.

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"Reading Empowers" (Lesenmacht stark)

• In Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) the state-wide programme targeted some of the weakest performing 210 secondary schools in the state, reaching 40.000 students between 2006 and 2010.

•individual reading support, a school-wide reading development strategy, teacher training in early identification of reading difficulties across subjects.

• An evaluation of the project using comparison groups shows the programme helped many low achieving students catch up.

• http://www.nzl.lernnetz.de/lesen/docs/NZL-Bericht_LMS_MMS_2010_web.pdf

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Programme against early school leaving, school failure and delinquency in Zones of Educational Priority/Cypress

• The programme consists of several activities that are implemented during school, after school and usually during summer vacations.

• The Zones provide a literacy-based school programme to help students improve their reading and writing skills and their vocabulary knowledge.

• In addition to this, extracurricular activities are organised for disadvantages students which aim to enhance students’ self esteem and prevent delinquent behaviour and school leaving.

• These activities usually include external experts, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, as well as tutors for certain subjects and childminders for outdoor games, arts and crafts, swimming, educational exploration and excursions.

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Teacher professionalism support gap (OECD 2016)

• Teachers need tailored support which also leads to more teacher satisfaction.

• There is a gap in support between teachers in high and low need schools (high-needs schools - > 30% of the students belong to these categories: second-language learners, with special needs or socio-economically disadvantaged, low-need schools: less than 11% of their students in one of the categories). The gap refers to

• (1) professional knowledge base – the presence of teaching credentials and support for continued professional development;

• (2) autonomy – the decision-making power teachers have over aspects of their teaching; and

• (3) peer networks – the role teachers play in regulating their own standards, including measures of peer socialisation, guidance and feedback.

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OECD (2016) Supporting Teacher Professionalism

Policy implications and recommendations:

• requiring teachers to participate in pre-service formal teacher education programmes that expose teachers to pedagogy and provide opportunities for practice teaching;

• expanding induction and mentoring programmes;

• supporting teachers in conducting classroom-based individual or collaborative research;

• encouraging teachers’ participation in networks of other teachers for information exchange.

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Initial Teacher Training

Strathclyde Literacy Clinic

• The Strathclyde Clinic is a Scottish literacy project which addresses student primary teachers who are working with pupils aged 7-10 years.

• Student teachers learn how to apply research knowledge in order to identify and coach one struggling learner. They usually work in a group of four trainee teachers and give pupils lessons once a week for ten weeks. They are also provided with weekly tutorials from their academic teachers.

• Trainee teachers work with underprivileged children in order to improve their literacy skills and give them a positive view of education.

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Pre-service and in-service teacher training (BaCuLit)

The European Comenius project BaCuLit (Basic Curriculum for

Teachers’ In-service Training in Content Area Literacy in Secondary

Schools, 2011-2012) qualifies as the first European programme to

offer a minimum standard in this area (D. Gaile, ISIT Report Germany,

2015, p. 5). BaCuLit dedicates its six modules (about 40 hours) of

professional development for secondary teachers of all subjects

to literacy-related topics such as text structure and text diversity

(module 2), vocabulary instruction (module 3), teaching cognitive

and metacognitive reading strategies (module 4) and formative

assessment for content literacy and learning (module 5). Modules 1

and 6 focus on principles for classroom instruction which

systematically embed literacy in subject classes. (Garbe, BaCuLit

Handbook for Trainers, Cologne 2012, pp. 82-238; see also

www.baculit.eu).

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It is never too late to address the literacy challenge. Let us all look to play our part, whether as education professionals, parents or policymakers. Too much is at stake for us not to do so.

Thank you for your attention!