As a concerned Christian parent, I am always pleased to hear when my child is being taught truth from the bible.
So I was extremely impressed when I was told by his Year 1 teacher at our church school that the Joker is studying RML. This course is well known to Anglican Evangelicals for providing excellent in-depth bible study at St Helen’s Church in the City of London.
Eventually my brain clicked, since we were talking about the Joker’s reading and writing, and I twigged that she was actually referring to his literacy programme (which is very good, by the way, synthetic phonics and all that). Hopefully once he’s completed his first RML, he’ll be ready for the other one.
The Vicar's Wife 
Very holy! At our previous church RML stood for Retired Men’s Lunch so you can imagine my confusion when confronted with a St Helen’s Service!
Lucky child…RML literacy is very good. With all the information about synthetic phonics and the excellent programmes available there’s no reason for a single child to be left behind – and no need either for expensive ‘catch-up’ programmes. A century or so ago, children learned to read because they needed to read the bible and phonics teaching provided the logical base.
For parents with pre-school children who want to teach them to read in as unthreatening way as possible and for those whose children still struggle (and with good synthetic phonics accompanied by rigorous teaching this number should be less than 1%) have a look at my site, and particularly at the Case Studies in the research section. Learning to read is a basic human right and, for whatever reason, illiteracy is less common in most Church schools than in non-Church schools. Not quite sure why.
http://www.piperbooks.co.uk
Hi Geraldine, Welcome to the blog. Do you have a link for the data on illiteracy in church schools?