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A significant proportion of children move through primary school without securing foundational reading and arithmetic, and the gap compounds every year afterwards.
Every later education policy is built on this foundation. Without it, the rest is decoration.
Treat measured foundational learning as the single headline indicator for primary education, published school-cluster by school-cluster.
Advocate for regular, independent, publicly reported assessment at cluster level, and support volunteer-run remedial reading groups where communities want them.
Risk
Assessment becomes teaching to the test. Schools are blamed for intake they do not control.
Mitigation
Report progress, not just levels. Publish alongside intake context. Never rank individual teachers publicly.