Thanks to Claude AI for writing the following from my notes.

LABOUR PARTY EDUCATION POLICY

A POLICY PROPOSAL

Raising Standards in Primary Education Through Direct Instruction

Status: Draft Policy Proposal | Audience: Shadow Education Team | February 2026

Executive Summary

Around one in four children in England leave primary school unable to read at the expected level, with comparable deficits in writing and arithmetic. This failure has profound lifelong consequences: poor literacy is associated with limited employment prospects, lower earnings, poorer health outcomes, and reduced civic participation. The economic cost to the UK has been estimated at £81 billion per year.

A substantial body of research, including the largest educational experiment ever conducted in the United States, consistently identifies Direct Instruction (DI) — the systematic, scripted teaching method developed by Siegfried Engelmann — as the most effective pedagogical approach for teaching foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools. Yet DI is used in fewer than 1% of UK primary schools.

This paper argues that a Labour government should introduce a phased, supported programme of Direct Instruction adoption in primary schools, beginning in areas with the worst educational outcomes. This is not a proposal to eliminate teacher autonomy across the board; it is a targeted, evidence-based intervention for foundational skills where the evidence for DI’s superiority is especially strong.

1. The Scale of the Problem

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