As the election campaigning gets underway for the poll on May 6th UKLA has published its ‘Agenda for Action’ as a special supplement in the spring 2010 edition of English 4-11.The ‘Agenda for Action’ will be sent to all the major political parties to make a strategic intervention in their thinking about future educational policy, particularly policy associated with literacy teaching and learning.To ensure that literacy education in the UK is world class UKLA calls for:
- a more coherent approach to listening and talking as central to the curriculum
- learning opportunities that engage learners creatively and take account of the multiple modes of learning
- wider recognition of the vital role that digital literacy plays in the lives of children and young people
- greater awareness of the important role of language in learning and intercultural understanding
- teaching strategies and a curriculum that is locally relevant, respecting and valuing home literacy experience and cultural background
- attention to the needs of individual children as well as an integrated approach to interventions in literacy
- a more enlightened approach to assessment and testing
- greater emphasis on the role of literature in children’s emotional, intellectual and social development.
UKLA is recommending the establishment of a national working party to discuss and debate the shape and design of literacy policy, pedagogy and curriculum. The full text of the Agenda for Action can also be downloaded as a pdf file below. The ‘Agenda for Action’ is a work in progress, so comments and responses are encouraged and welcomed via the UKLA website members blog page: https://www.ukla.org/community
