REFERENCE the front page headline story ‘Schools fail our children’ on May 12, I have pointed out via the Oxford Mail letters page many times that the hours received in tuition by primary pupils for literacy are totally inadequate and in my view do not even amount to hours but just minutes weekly.

No amount of chop and change within the primary education system will work unless the hours of literacy tuition actually received by pupils are examined in detail and published, to provide an understanding of the problem of the missing tuition hours.

The ‘teaching week’ is the hours spent teaching by a teacher and is around 21 hours, and has not changed since the 1950s.

The ‘learning week’, the hours of tuition actually received by pupils, was also around 21 hours before the 1960s.

Today the ‘learning week’ is a tiny fraction of what is required, which creates a huge dependency on parents to provide the missing hours at home.

To resolve many or most primary education problems the ‘learning week’ must be increased to match the ‘teaching week’, as it did before the 1960s.

Recent education initiatives by Oxford City Council worked because they increased tuition time. It could not be more simple, and should not involve any extra cost.

STEVE NICHOLSON
Campbell Road
Oxford