Screening assessments identified pupils who struggled with reading and needed further assessment. All the schools screened the whole of Year 7, as well as pupils who joined after Year 7. Each school then used more granular diagnostic assessments to identify specific reading gaps and weaknesses, so they could give pupils the appropriate additional teaching. Diagnostic tests were most often used with the lowest 20% to 30% identified though screening. Schools invested in several diagnostic assessments to test different aspects of reading, including phonic knowledge, word reading efficiency, reading accuracy and speed, and comprehension.

No one sits down with high school teachers and explains how Year 6 SATs work. For teachers that is something that is not explained. We don’t understand what the scaled score of 100 or 95 means in high school. Yes, there is definitely a gap there. Diagnostic tests included DiaPhon, Diagnostic Reading Analysis, Test of Word Reading Efficiency and Fresh Start. Schools tended to stop additional support and monitoring once pupils were beyond key stage 3. Each of the schools assessed and monitored struggling readers until at least Year 9. However, none of them told us that they continued to monitor pupils’ progress beyond key stage 3, or once pupils had reached their chronological reading age. Nor did they always continue to give pupils the additional help once they had ‘graduated’ from a reading programme. This meant that the schools did not always know the longer-term impact of help, or whether pupils continued to struggle in key stage 4. Several pupils told us that they felt less enthusiastic and motivated to read for pleasure by the time they reached key stage 4. Introduction Skilled reading The release of this report does not mean that we should let go of “sight words.” Certainly children need to know those too! The core of reading instruction should be based on phonics patterns and methods. Of course we, as adults, do not sound out the words we read; so our goal is for children to commit words to memory for both reading and spelling. But for beginning readers, it is most beneficial to sound it out.In at least 2 schools, staff described a ‘cultural shift’ in reading and the status of reading. This was not something that happened overnight, as one teacher explained: We used the NPD to identify 40 top performing secondary schools. In these schools, data showed that pupils who entered Year 7 with below expected standards in reading went on to make accelerated progress, and achieved at least a grade 4 in GCSE English language. All the schools in the NPD sample had at least 35 pupils in Year 11 who had achieved level 3 or below in the key stage 2 reading comprehension assessment in Year 6. [footnote 35] Data was extracted for Year 11 in both 2018/19 and 2017/18. We excluded pupils who speak English as an additional language, because we wanted to identify pupils who struggled with reading specifically rather than English language. Visit school selection The illustrations in Primary Phonics are very simple, and the readers progressively learns their vowel sounds. These Storybooks Starter Set 1 are the perfect introduction to phonics-based early reading. The books contain decodable stories, so they have an added comprehension element while the inside covers clearly list phonetic concepts and sight words included in each book.

According to 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment ( PISA) data, at age 15 in England there is a gap equivalent to 8.5 years of schooling between the highest and lowest achieving 10% of readers. [footnote 28]The level of reading achievement of struggling readers suggests they will have difficulty with more complex texts that require specific subject knowledge. [footnote 29] Methodology overviewStrong leadership of reading made sure that these schools had staff with the right professional development and training to teach reading. The culture of reading embedded in all the schools was summed up by a Senior HMI who was part of a research visit to one school: Is your child easily distracted, so do you need fewer pictures? (Bob Books, Fun Tales, Primary Phonics) In several of the schools, training for all staff included knowledge about how children learn to read, and the components of reading that proficient readers need to master.

Do your children need slow and steady review of their phonics words? (Wildflower Ramblings, A Beka) During focus groups, inspectors told us that although schools assessed pupils’ reading, it was not always clear how these assessments were used or what their purpose was. They described how programmes like Accelerated Reader [footnote 31] are regularly used by secondary schools to monitor and assess reading, but said that the information from these programmes was not used systematically in the school curriculum.Pupils told us how teachers would talk to them about reading. For example, one Year 7 pupil said that his teacher would recommend new books because they ‘know what I like’. Other teachers talked about the importance of knowing their pupils and knowing their interests, so they could recommend books they might be interested in or broaden their horizons by introducing them to new authors. The role of librarians HMI said in focus groups that schools often did not know whether any strategy to help struggling readers was working. This was because they did not evaluate the impact of individual reading programmes. HMI said schools found it hard to talk about the difference something was making and how this informed planning and evaluation. Buying programmes to support struggling readers should be the beginning, not the end of the process. Before buying a programme, schools should know what will be needed. There is a body of knowledge that all pupils need so they can make progress. Schools should use insightful assessment to ask whether what is in place is helping those who need it most, and what progress these pupils have made in learning that body of knowledge.