Fines for poor schools proposed in wake of last year’s rioting

About a fifth of school leavers have the literacy skills of an 11-year-old or younger, leaving many with no stake in society and no reason to stay out of trouble, the riots communities and victims panel said.

Introducing fines, which would then be used to help to bring children up to the required standards, would help ensure the risk of future riots on the scale seen last August was “significantly reduced”, it said.

Panel chairman Darra Singh said: “We must give everyone a stake in society. There are people ‘bumping along the bottom’, unable to change their lives.

“When people don’t feel they have a reason to stay out of trouble, the consequences for communities can be devastating – as we saw last August.”

The report added: “Every child should be able to read and write to an age-appropriate standard by the time they leave primary and then secondary school.

“If they cannot, the school should face a financial penalty equivalent to the cost of funding remedial support to take the child to the appropriate standard.”

Almost 106,000 seven-year-olds failed to reach Level 2 – the standard expected of the age group – in writing, figures published by the Department for Education (DfE) last September showed. Just over 83,000 pupils have a reading age of no better than a five-year-old.

One in three 11-year-olds in England failed to achieve at least Level 4 in reading, writing and maths in their national curriculum, or Sats, tests, separate DfE figures published last August showed.

Schools should also help young people build their characters to help them to realise their potential and help prevent them making poor decisions, like rioting, the panel said.

The wide-ranging report also suggested the desire for designer brands fuelled young people’s involvement in last year’s looting.

The panel found the riots were characterised “by opportunistic looting and very much targeted at brands”, with half of all recorded offences being acquisitive. Most of the shops targeted sold “high-value consumer products”, including designer clothes, trainers, mobile telephones and computers.

More than half of 1,200 people surveyed thought there was a “growing gap between rich and poor” in their local area, with 85 per cent saying advertising put pressure on young people to own the latest products. More than two-thirds felt materialism among young people was a problem within their local area and seven in 10 felt steps needed to be taken to reduce the amount of advertising aimed at young people.

“While no one individual brand is to blame, children and young people must be protected from excessive marketing, while supporting business and not harming commerce,” the report said. “We believe that businesses have a clear role giving something back to society and making progressive steps to sharing wealth and providing opportunities for individuals to achieve a stake in business.”

The report called for the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to make the impact of advertising and branding techniques on young people a feature of its new school education programme “to raise resilience among children”.

It also called for the Government to “appoint an independent champion to manage a dialogue between Government and big brands, to further this debate”.

Some 200 people in each of the six areas affected by the riots were polled over the phone between February 14 and 22. The report also found up to 15,000 people, most aged under 24, actively took part in the riots, with “countless more bystanders observing”.