 Well, good evening everybody and thank you rock for the opportunity to speak on this subject which is, seems to be the most important subject of all, it seems to me that if we get it right for children then all of the things that we want to see for Scotland, creativity, talent, innovation and achievement will fall out of that and be achieved through that. So This is something that's very close to my heart and very close to what Scottish Book Trust does every day in every community around Scotland. A lot of what I'm going to say is going to echo what has already been said. I would certainly concur with Cathy that we're generally doing very, very well in terms of our practises and policies towards children. Mynd mwyn optim while thinking about it in the right way. However, I have been asked to provide a provocation. I will. I want to talk about poverty really. One of the questions Robb asked us to answer is what is life like for children and young people in Scotland today? What helps and what does not. That is an enormous question and needs to be broken down. There are different layers and different layers of need according to a child's postcode and socioeconomic and family situation. Today, I want to talk about the twenty-five percent of Scottish children that live in poverty. That is around about 200, 250,000 families. Yr unrhyw y ddu i'r wneud ar y dyfodol, rydyn ni'n bwysig fydd ymddangos i'r bwysig. Ymddangos, y dyfodol yn ddifion economenau, ydy hi'n gyntaf o'r cyfnod i ddweud i'r ddweud a'r gweithio'r ffordd i'r bwysig a'r ymddangos i'r ffordd i'r ei hyn. Mae'r grffordd maes i mewn i'r ysgrifennidau a'r ysgrifennidau, yn rhoi'r ysgrifennidau. Ieithio, yr Ieswyrd Gws Rydw i'r llwunioedd ym Llywodraeth. Mae Gwyrdraeth yn ym Mhwylwch, ond rydyn ni i'w ddod o'n gyfnod i'r llwyddiadau fyddion. Rydyn ni i'w ddigwyddu'n ei fan hyn sy'n gwybod, sy'n gwybod ychydig i'w fath o'r blaen o'r hollodau? Mae'r ddod o'r hollodau. yn ymgyrch ar gyfer y gallach amser. Rwy'n meddwl o'r norosiau ar gyfer y llunio, ond rwy'n meddwl o'r ffordd. Rwy'n meddwl o'r holl, mae'n gofio'n dod am yr edrych i chi'n gyntafol o'r blaen o'r llunio yma. Rwy'n meddwl y ffysgol ei ddweud yn dyma, hwnnw, fel yna'r ffysgol, rydw i'n cyfwyd â'r 5 ysgol yma, mae'n gweithio'r bobl yn gwneud yn gweithio'r pethau, yw amdano ar gyfer y ffordd, mae gennymiaeth yng Nghymru o'r eiajo fewn gwaith ar gyfer y ffordd, amdano dwi'n gweld yn 500 o boeddog yn Estlenedig eich cwrthodol yn rhyngwun i'ch cydael ac dylai'r cyd-gr�mwy o boeddfyrdd neu o'r cyd-gr�mwy o'r cyd-gr�mwy o boeddog. Felly, mae'r sicr o ddaeth yn cyflwyngywyr eu cyd-gr�mwy o safoneth, felly yma o boeddwch yn credu newydd o'r cyd-gr�mwy o boeddwch. Children, for example, from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, are twice as likely to have a speech language and communication concern at the 27-30 month check. Research data using data from the 1970 British cohort study shows that the effects of this is long-lasting. Vocabulary scores at age five are associated with literacy levels as adults at the age of 34 or 35. So, we're talking about something that is absolutely central to our business of providing the best start for children in Scotland that we can. And the same is true of numeracy. 28% of children from poorer families compared to 56% of those from more advantaged backgrounds perform well in numeracy, that's nearly half. And one of the end results of this is that around two in every three pupils from Scotland's most deprived areas leave school without any qualifications. I'm going to say that again, two in every three pupils from Scotland's most deprived areas leave school without any qualifications compared to just over two in every five from the least deprived areas. And then further to that, again, fewer than one in ten pupils from the most disadvantaged districts in our country have been accepted or were accepted to university in 2015. Again, one less than one in ten pupils. It puts us in mind of some of the things that Jimmy Reid said in Glasgow, looking at some of the Glasgow housing schemes and seeing them as a reservoir of unrealised talent. If we are to improve as a nation, if we are to invest in the future, this is something that we definitely need to fix. And it's something that's been noticed elsewhere as well. So the PISA results regularly say the PISA education results, which compare results of around about 26 different countries around the world and particularly in Europe, assert that the link between deprivation and poor academic performance is especially acute in Scotland compared to other European countries. So we have any number of, if you like policies, we have a number of research reports that demonstrate very, very clearly to us that there's a persistent gap in attainment between pupils from the richest and poorest households in Scotland. And this gap starts in preschool years and continues throughout primary and secondary school. In most cases, it widens as pupils progress through the school years. And most importantly, as I've demonstrated with some of these facts and figures, the poverty attainment gap has a direct impact on school leaver destinations and thus the potential to determine income levels in adulthood. Of course, it isn't just about income levels. It's about the whole of one social being, if you like. But the evidence is there and it's something that we really, really need to address if we are to say that Scotland is the best place for all children to grow up in. One of the effects of poverty, it has to do with, and again this connects to things that both Kathy and Madeleine said, it has to do with agency, it has to do with resilience. What I mean by agency is one's own self-belief that one can act in the world and actually do things in the world and achieve things in the world and be recognised in the world. A while back, I was talking to Karen McCluskey from the, I speak with the violence reduction unit in Glasgow, a really astonishing woman who's done incredible work, and she runs an informal get together of around about 100 families in Castle Milk, which is one of the most deprived areas in Glasgow. And one of the things that she said about that group, which really struck me, was that she conducted a vote as to how many of those families felt a sense of hope and aspiration. And 70% of those 100 families said that they didn't feel any hope and therefore had no aspiration. This is something that we have to fix. But of course it goes part and parcel with poverty, with unemployment and with a post-industrial landscape that Scotland has been left with. One of the really positive things that I think we can do and have done in the past is give young people the right to vote at the age of 16. That directly correlates to agency and it's certainly my own experience with my own family during the referendum. My kids went from, I don't even know the difference between left and right to pitting me against the wall. So it really works and I think it's a very important thing. Unsurprisingly though I think that the key aspect of agency lies in the root of language. Language is power. Language is agency. The ability to use language. The ability to communicate confidently to languages as a ground of thought itself is incredibly important and sits at the centre of, I think, many of the things that we have to do and many of the things that we need to invest in in terms of children. Education and their social being. There's a wonderful quote from Timothy Snyder's wee book on tyranny, which I'd urge you to get if you haven't got it already. This is from chat 14. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases that everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books. This is all really good advice and I'll return to the question of the digital age in a minute. But that's all about agency. That's all about your language as your language and you being in control and confident of the power of your language and of your opinions and of the validity of them. So agency is incredibly important. Now the thing about literacy is it can't solve poverty but it's impossible to deal with poverty without dealing also with literacy because literacy sits at the centre of an interconnected web of effects which come from poverty. Literacy supports indeed unlocks learning in all other areas. It's crucial for developing employability skills and is a prerequisite for full informed and responsible participation in social, economic, cultural and political life. Without literacy skills health and wellbeing can be seriously impaired or even negated. That last is a quote from Sir Harry Burns who was the former chief medical officer for Scotland and who chaired the Standing Literacy Commission that I was on. And it completely demonstrates in a paragraph how literacy is interconnected with health, with education, with mental health, with all of those kinds of things. So where do we start? Well obviously we start with the early years. These are really, really crucial years in which to get things right and in which to put parents in a position to get things right. Harry Burns was very insistent on this. If you don't get it right in the first two years then you're in trouble in terms of that child's development. I don't necessarily agree with that but he's a chief medical officer so one needs to take that very seriously. Obviously the data from early years shows us this. The first few years have life laid the foundations for future learning. A child's brain doubles in size in the first year and by the age of three it's reached around 80% of its adult volume. So that's absolutely crucial period. I want to say another thing about the early years of language development and social and child development. There's no evidence that mothers are innately better than fathers at stimulating young children's language development but fathers often feel uncertain about it. So I think one of the things we've got to do is talk to fathers much more effectively and get fathers much more engaged in this whole area. I've lost count of the number of times that I've been to library conferences, to international conferences on literacy and so on and so forth. You look around the room and you can't see a man. What's that about? Why are men not invested in this? I think that's something that we really have to challenge as a society and we have to get men to take their responsibility seriously and to contribute to the family, to their children and wider a field. One of the things I've been looking at in terms of preparing for this evening was growing up in Scotland reports. There's a new report, one that was delivered in December about the poverty of aspiration. Here is a slightly different point but a very important point to make I feel in terms of dealing with this whole area and it in a sense relates very directly to James' story as Cathy told us. This report is saying the attainment gap will neither be narrowed nor closed so long as policy focuses on children's educational outcomes rather than the factors that affect their outcomes, value, respect, dignity, understanding, inclusion, appreciation and participation within school. So it's not just about the academic business of education, it's about the social envelope of school, of education and of their relations in that envelope and that's something that we really have to zero in on. And we can't make the mistake of thinking that parents who live in poverty do not lack aspiration for their children. I read some research a number of years ago which showed that parents without university education are actually much more likely than any other group of parents to take their children to the museum, to the library, to the art gallery etc etc. So that puts us in a position of saying well these parents want this help, they want the best for their children, they understand aspiration and we should respond very much to that. And again echoing things that Madeline has said, this report goes on to say we need to focus on the mechanisms by which aspirations can diminish over time for young people. There's a very famous longitudinal study in California that was run, I think, begun in the 1970s and followed a large group of children right the way through to higher education. And at every stage they ask these children are you an imaginative creative person and in primary school it's like 99% of the kids said yes I am and by the time they get to the end of secondary school that's dropped to 20%. So we need to understand that and we need to focus on those mechanisms by which aspirations can diminish over time. We need to focus on keeping young people's aspirations on track because things never go to plan and that's where resilience comes in, that's where hope comes in, that's where encouragement and support come in. And we need to, this is a big one I have to say, dismantle the local and structural barriers to high aspirations and one might add the social and economic barriers that many children face today, many families face today. There's a push me pull me thing going on, our society is becoming more unequal and yet we're desperately trying to assure it up and make it more equal. There are many many socio-economic things that need to happen in order to make sure that our society is more equal and as academics like Kate Pickett in a wonderful book called The Spirit Level have demonstrated we are all better off if we are all better off. You know gaps in society, big disparities between people's economic circumstances and social circumstances are not good for our society and the problem with Britain it seems to me over the last 40 years is that we've become a kind of free market neoliberal individualistic culture. I think that's slightly different in Scotland, we have a better idea of our country, we have a better idea of our communities and we're more cohesive in that way, but we're not much more cohesive in that way. So that's something that we really need to focus on because again if you read reports about attainment gaps and education like there's a wonderful report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2014 penned by Edward Sussu and Sue Ellis from Strathgard University, you know one of the principle things that will help families, help children grow into a better future are exactly these kinds of measures and indeed jobs and opportunity. So now let me move on to the future and address some of the things that are coming at us from the rise of the digital world. It's certainly true to say I would say that the world is changing from one that has been dominated by the logos, the word, to one that's dominated by the simulacra, the image. You'll notice I haven't shown you an image this evening. So digital technology may be changing the forms and means by which we read, write, communicate, access information, but it doesn't remove our need to be confident, articulate and skillful with language. Instead it increases the need and extends its range. So the digital world is a challenge but it's not full of bad things. There are some things that we need to be concerned about which I'll get on to in conclusion but one of the positive things about digital world is that it makes access to information and access to content a lot more democratic, a lot more widespread. However it does require us I think and we think a lot about this at book trust to redefine what we mean by literacy. The way that information is now commonly accessed from a variety of sources, print, digital and visual and the hypertextuality that digital enables posits a new idea of literacy that we should indeed have to embrace. That's not to say that that's all a good thing but it is an inevitable thing. For the last three or four years we've been conducting a research project with Strathclyde University and Oxford University into the differences of what happens in somebody's brain and what their brain processes are when they watch a film and when they read a book. Now the academics will be horrified at what I'm going to say next because they're a very cautious bunch and they're very careful about what they can claim but really at the end of the day the process of the brain processes that are required and that are active when we're reading a much more total, a much more complex. And the reason for that is that film gives you everything you need, it gives you all the information but when you read a book you've actually got to fill in that information yourself so your brain has to work harder. And one of the results of that is that you remember that experience, it goes deeper if you like, you remember that experience a lot better than you would remember a film and often films fade from the memory a lot quicker than books do. What about screen time? I mean children in Scotland and elsewhere spend at least five hours a day in front of a screen. As Chris Hanlon from the University of Glasgow has said, this makes children or over reliance on screen makes children less creative and problem solving, less able to persevere at tasks, less tolerant of unstructured time and more tired. We need to be aware of these things. The other thing I think the digital world is giving us is that light reading, what one academic calls reading on the prow that's moving on the internet between different information and data points is replacing the traditional model of how we read, how we read a novel for example, which we would call digital. It's a deep reading. In other words, the immersion in a text that might take us a month to finish and that is a constant process over that month for us so that the meaning of reading is now becoming increasingly about finding information and often settling for the first thing that comes to hand rather than contemplating and understanding what we're actually reading and being immersed in it. One of the effects of this and I think is very important for a healthy democratic society is that one's sense of critical relationship towards information changes. Now I have to think that critical relation to information is one of the cornerstones of democracy. Our ability to evaluate where that piece of information has come from, why it is in the form it is, why it's saying what it is and what other information there may be that might contradict that or that might modify that. These are really, really important skills and again are absolutely directly relevant to a person's sense of agency and self image as a well informed active citizen of a democratic country. So in conclusion I would say that one of the dangers that we are going to have to face over the next 10, 20, 30 years is actually holding on to an idea of what the value of reading is and why it is valuable and being able to communicate that and to promote that practice. In amongst particularly our young children because the demands of a deep reading processes are going to be lost in a culture whose principal mediums advantage, speed, multitasking and processing the next piece of information. Readers will neither have the time nor the motivation to think through possible layers of meaning in what they read. The issue about reading is that it involves sophisticated processes that include inferential and deductive reasoning, analogical skills, critical skills, reflection and insight. In conclusion I just want to quote from Frank Fureddi who read a wonderful book about reading and reading culture. Literature penetrates and shapes human thought. It transforms people's mentality. It alters the way they think and can in certain circumstances shape their identity. It is the principal gateway through which questions of value are internalised, articulated and clarified. That's why it's so important. Thank you.