Blog: The Government is talking tough and warning that pupils will be given an “MOT” to ensure they can read properly at the age of six, writes Education correspondent Dave Morris

Education Secretary Michael Gove also confirmed that headteachers whose schools persistently fail to reach expected literacy standards will be sacked.

But I hope the Government is not going to be too heavy handed.

Parents too should be held more accountable when it comes to teaching their children how to read.

But for many it is far easier to hand over all the responsibility to schools.

The same goes for discipline.

The demands made on schools seem to be growing all the time. So much is expected of them and I’m surprised so many people still want to be teachers.

Mr Gove’s action follows the release of figures which show that while the proportion of 11-year-olds achieving the benchmark Level 4 in English has risen from 49 per cent to 81 per cent in the last 15 years.

But a persistent minority of children are failing to reach even Level 2, the standard expected of seven-year-olds, by the time they leave primary school.

Mr Gove said there was an “unbudgable” group of children, mostly boys, who are not learning to read.

Some schools in deprived areas, he said, had managed to deal with the problem effectively while other headteachers still had persistently high rates of illiteracy in their classrooms.

He added: “All I would say is, what have we got to be afraid of if we ask all schools to get children by the time that they are six capable of having taken the first steps of reading properly?”

Ofsted will also be asked to ensure schools know the best reading schemes, while headteachers will have to publish which schemes they use.These will then be compared to test results so Mr Gove and his officials can identify which schemes work best.

OK, I’ll go along with that.

But I still say parents should not be shirking their responsibility.

We know that many children are not being encouraged to read at home.

Instead they have their own TVs and mobiles and research has pointed to a large proprtion playing addictive computer games for three hours or more a day.

It doesn’t make the job of already hard-pressed teachers any easier.

And threatening to sack headteachers isn’t helpful either.

In the mid-1990s just half of children reached the level in literacy expected for their age group, so big improvementrs have been made.

I’ve no doubts that the levels of achievement can be increased.

But I hope more can be done encourage parents to play their part and that Government can ease off the threats to schools.