Tories: Children must read by six

Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove announced that the Conservatives would scrap the Key Stage 1 exam for six and seven-year-olds and replace it with a straightforward reading test.

Tory leader David Cameron will flesh out the party's proposals for education later this week with plans for long-term structural change to narrow the attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children.

But a key plank of the drive will involve extending the use of "synthetic phonics", which focuses on teaching the sounds which make up words.

In an article for The Sunday Times newspaper, Mr Gove said: "At the age of six, a child should have learned to read".

He went on that "eradicating the plague of reading failure" would be the bedrock of further improvements in educational achievement.

"Nowhere has the educational establishment's influence been more damaging than in teaching reading," he said. "It is only once children have learnt to read that they can then go on to read to learn.

"But every year thousands of children leave primary school without the ability to read properly. And these are the young people who, because they cannot benefit from even the best teaching in secondary schools, go on to become disruptive and ill-disciplined and, all too often, drop out of the system."

On Tuesday, Mr Cameron will further spell out his education policy with the publication of a "green paper" detailing long-term structural proposals.

A central criticism of the present system will be that disadvantaged children fall further behind as they progress through school.