Illiteracy in London's schools is a scandal

Books might be aplenty at Hay, but one in three of the capital's pupils don't own a single one

• • Deborah Orr
  • The Guardian, Thursday 2 June 2011
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The Duchess of Cornwall at the Hay festival. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

Camilla Windsor, duchess of wherever, has been in Hay, at the book festival, encouraging children's literacy.

Of course she has. Hay is an excellent place to discover children who don't own a single book, who cannot read or write properly. Oh, no, hang on a minute . . . that's London, official seat of royal power. Hay is full of people who self-select as passionate book-lovers.

London's local paper, the Evening Standard, has begun a campaign to highlight what a lot of parents in the capital know already – that even the educational basics are pretty hit-and-miss. One in three kids in the city say they own no books, one in four leaves primary school unable to read or write properly, and one in five leaves secondary school without being able to read and write with confidence.

For years, the last government insisted that primary school was fine, and that problems emerged only at secondary schools. It's a shame that reality is being faced only now – just as funding is so tight. Photo-ops at Hay are all very well. But Camilla knows nothing of what it is like to send your child off to school each day, knowing that they are not making anything like the progress that they could or should, despite your own efforts to help them. But I do, and so do many other supposedly pointy-elbowed "pushy" parents, who are used to having their worries belittled or denied