This week’s report from the Education Endowment Foundation showing just how challenging the picture is for reading in our primary schools will come as little surprise to anyone in the sector.
Even before the pandemic, the reading gap was a nettle we needed to collectively grasp, but now it should be the most pressing issue on every school leader’s mind. And that includes secondary schools, too.
Because when you strip everything back, the truth is that reading is the keystone of education. It’s no overstatement to say that reading is the single most important element that locks together the whole educational edifice, and it creates an enduring bridge that can transform life chances and lead every child to a more fulfilling and more rewarding life.
So, the prize is huge. As is the effort and work to get there.
First, if we want to obliterate the reading gap so that every child is reading at their expected age, we need to be sharper - much sharper - in how we go about it. This is all about deliberate and focused intention: reading cannot be a bolt-on. It needs to be centre-stage of every school or academy trust’s strategy.
To do that we have to have the right information so that we truly know the detail of the scale of the problem and the nature of it.
At Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), we decided to invest a six-figure sum in twice-yearly reading assessments for every single child from Year 2 to Year 11. While this is a hefty price tag, it’s the only way to really know what we are dealing with, and it helps us to establish both a baseline on chronological reading ages and a measure of the impact of our actions.
Improving reading standards in schools
Our very first measures from autumn 2021 showed that 64 per cent of our primary pupils were reading below their chronological age, and 52 per cent of our secondary students were reading below their chronological age.
Quite the eye-opener when you think what those figures mean for the children who are not reading at their expected level.
But far better to be clear-sighted on all of this, with all of its specificity, than to continue with just a broad-brush sense of the issue and challenge.
The next step is to work out what works, and what works best. High-quality CPD for all teachers and leaders is essential here, so that everyone really understands the science of reading.
All of our schools now have a reading lead (both primary and secondary), and all have prioritised reading across the curriculum.
This year we’ve particularly focused on the teaching of fluency and vocabulary instruction, and have delivered this through our reading lead network. And we’ve also rolled out a tiered suite of high-quality, evidence-based interventions, including programmes like Read, Write Inc, Lexia and Fresh Start.
Our most recent data is still stark, but it shows signs of early promise.
Overall, reading ages were up 11 per cent at the end of the first year of our network-wide reading strategy. This feels like a decent return for a first year, and one we will absolutely continue to build on as we move towards 2028, when we have set ourselves the target of 90 per cent of all AET students reading at their expected age-related level.
The most recent assessments also highlight some really interesting insights, too, about summer learning loss - especially in secondary schools.
Across our schools, we assess on reading in July and at the start of the school year to help us drill down further into what is going on over the summer.
While there is an overall drop of 7 percentage points, on average the reading loss in primaries is negligible. Whereas in our secondaries, there was a marked drop by 8 percentage points.
And looking at disadvantaged pupils and non-disadvantaged over the summer, at primary there was no discernible difference, while at secondary both were negatively affected, with disadvantaged students slightly more so.
There is so much more we need to do to dig into this data and really understand what is going on, and a key area of investigation is how we can keep all children reading over the summer, but especially those in secondary. And this means doubling down on embedding a culture of reading and instilling a love of reading across every school.
Claire Heald is director of education at Academies Enterprise Trust
