The department does not have any policies that specifically target bookshops. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, has set an ambition to halve the proportion of children who finish reception without the language and literacy skills needed to thrive by 2028. As part of this, we will be launching a public-facing campaign later this year to improve the quality and quantity of parent-child interactions and make it easy for parents to chat, play and read with their children. This includes working closely with the National Literacy Trust, businesses and libraries to improve access to books.<\/p>
In partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation, we are also investing over £4 million to home learning environment trials in the north of England. The trials range from an intensive home visiting programme aimed at improving early literacy, to a texting initiative intended to nudge parents to do more activities that help develop literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional skills.<\/p>
As part of the £26.3 million English hubs programme, participating schools will also receive support to improve teaching of English as an additional language phonics and to ensure children have access to decodable books for the early stages of reading.<\/p>"} , "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4689", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Lord Agnew of Oulton"} } , "answeringMemberPrinted" : {"_value" : "Lord Agnew of Oulton"} , "dateOfAnswer" : {"_value" : "2019-03-27", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "isMinisterialCorrection" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "questionFirstAnswered" : [{"_value" : "2019-03-27T17:15:00.98Z", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} ]} , "answeringDeptId" : {"_value" : "60"} , "answeringDeptShortName" : {"_value" : "Education"} , "answeringDeptSortName" : {"_value" : "Education"} , "date" : {"_value" : "2019-03-13", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "hansardHeading" : {"_value" : "Bookshops"} , "houseId" : {"_value" : "2"} , "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25277", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Lords"} } ], "questionText" : "To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to promote and support bookshops to improve levels of literacy.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4564", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Lord Bird"} } , "tablingMemberPrinted" : [{"_value" : "Lord Bird"} ], "uin" : "HL14514"} ], "itemsPerPage" : 10, "page" : 0, "startIndex" : 1, "totalResults" : 1, "type" : ["http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#ListEndpoint", "http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#Page"]} }