SPECTACULAR success is claimed today for the special literacy summer schools that the Government launched this year.

They were the three-week courses held in 50 schools during July and August for 11-year-olds who had failed to reach their expected reading level before transferring to secondary education.

Of the 1,500 who attended at least half made six months' progress and more in that short time.

This is encouraging and that the scheme, which is also backed by private sponsorship, is to be expanded ten fold next year is welcome.

But is there not cause for inquiry into this success - when such rapid improvement can be achieved in such a short time while, apparently, at ordinary school, the opposite applies?

Surely, it would be valuable to discover what effective teaching methods can be transferred from the summer schools to the regular ones. The real need, after all, is not to expand the summer literacy schools, but to render them redundant.

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