ABSTRACT
Improving the literacy of school children has long been identified as fundamental for academic, social and economic success by a range of professionals, including teachers, academics, politicians (from across the ideological range) and employers. This unity of desire perhaps masks, if only briefly, the widely disparate views held by such interested parties in recent decades, first as to the reasons why literacy is not yet deemed to be at a satisfactory level and second how it is to be improved.
