Literacy strategies are particularly insistent. They began a long
time age, and the Bullock Report reinvented them in 1975, to be followed by the fabulously well resourced National literacy Strategy. I'm not arguing the case for all of these initiatives here, though I don't doubt the value of many of them, and (by the way) principle of cross-curricularity is long overdue for revival in secondary teaching. Hiving everything off into subjects is one of the cruel and restrictive practices we arbitrarily force upon children when they become eleven years old. These are important issues; but what I'm arguing here (perhaps controversially) is that literacy isn't like the other strategies. It's fundamental to our teaching, in a way that even numeracy, important though it is, cannot be. We teach almost everything through the medium of spoken and written language. Literacy isn't an add-on. It isn't really a 'strategy'. It's our principle tool, and to be brilliant teachers we have to be constantly alive to its demands and its potential.