A TV soap opera and a fast-food snack made famous by a footballer might seem unlikely weapons in the Government's battle to raise standards in education.

But Channel 4's Brookside and Walker's crisps were hailed last night as key players in the drive to improve literacy among Britain's youth.

In a keynote address to 170 delegates at York's National Railway Museum, leading educationalist Professor Michael Barber unveiled his vision of how to drive up standards. Professor Barber, a former pupil of Bootham School, now heads the Government's Standards and Effectiveness Unit and gave the first City of York Annual Education Lecture titled, High Ideals and Hard Choices.

He claimed the only way to ignore the National Year of Reading, which starts in September, would be to leave the country.

He said Brookside had agreed to write a literacy storyline into its script to coincide with the campaign, while Walker's crisps, currently promoted by Gary Lineker, had agreed to carry its logo on its crisp bags.

In an ambitious lecture, given to teachers, council staff, educationalists and business people, Professor Barber spelled out what it took to create a world-class education system and examined how Britain measured up.

He said in the new millennium, world-class standards would demand that everyone was highly literate and numerate, well informed, capable of learning constantly and confidently, and able to play their part in a democratic society. It would demand an education system which enabled all pupils to become highly expert in at least one field, creative and innovative and able to lead.

He said we lagged behind other countries in maths and literacy, but earned a top ten place for science.

He said: "These statistics provide powerful justification for the Government's vigorous attack on the long tail of under-performance and the priority it attaches to the systematic literacy and numeracy strategies."

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