Please note: Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is now Lift Schools, this post may reference the name of the trust at time of posting.
You could argue that the most important thing a teacher can do in the classroom is to teach their pupils to read. Reading is a vital, enabling competence. A school may have a brilliant curriculum rich in ambition and cultural capital, but if a child cannot read, they simply can't access it. A lifelong love and proficiency for reading should be an entitlement for all.
Reading success is central to AET’s 490 ambition. One of our targets is for 90% of pupils to be able to read at their chronological reading age by 2028.
Although our ambitions are six years away, every day counts. If our current Year 1 pupils do not end the year being able to read to their expected level, Year 2 becomes more about catching up, resulting in a knock-on effect with children getting further and further behind. By the time they reach Year 6, it has become much more difficult to recover lost ground.
To accelerate our efforts, last year, AET launched a new trust-wide reading strategy. We established a framework and priorities whilst also seeing year one as a ‘learning year’ to test out our theory of change. Year one focussed on four key components:
1. Establishing a Reading Leader in all schools so that someone is responsible for designing and delivering their reading strategy.
2. Setting up a Reading Leader network serving as a vehicle for training and collaboration for our Reading Leaders so that they can network, learn collectively and solve shared problems.
3. Offering high-impact reading interventions identifying a package of effective intervention programmes for pupils who are not yet reading at their chronological age. Following a robust investigation of effectiveness, we identified the following programmes for primary schools: A.R.R.O.W, Lexia Core 5, Read, Write Inc. Phonics, Read Write Inc. Fresh Start. And for secondary schools: A.R.R.O.W, Lexia Power Up, Read Write Inc. Fresh Start, and Thinking Reading.
4. Accurate and consistent assessment of reading ages so that the right interventions can be identified for all pupils who are not reading at their chronological age. We introduced New Group Reading Tests for all children in Years 2 – 11 to provide data on reading ages - every year, twice a year.
Over year one, we saw some big wins from our strategy. Between October and February, New Group Reading Tests results revealed that 6,984 children who had read significantly below chronological reading age made 16 months of reading progress over four months. The proportion of pupils reading at their chronological age increased from 44% in the autumn to 52% in February. The results from July were promising, too, with 55% reading at their chronological reading age - an increase of 11 percentage points from the autumn.
Although our initial approach was about ensuring intervention programmes were in place, we know there is no wonder drug to cure the challenge of learning to read. In education, we are often guilty of seeking silver bullets through ready-made programmes rather than transforming our practice to enable programmes to be successful. Any programme must be implemented with high levels of intent. And, of course, establishing a culture of reading and embedding reading within the curriculum in time is key. Now we are in year two, we’re turning our attention to this.
We are increasingly attentive to the efficacy of implementation habits because success is also determined by execution and programme fidelity. Teachers and leaders involved with our reading strategy need to understand the ‘why’ behind what we are doing. We need to prioritise this carefully in our schools so that they are doing fewer things but doing them well - creating the conditions for impact.
By the end of this academic year, we aim for 65% of pupils across the trust to read at their chronological reading age. To achieve this, we have identified five necessary adaptations for our strategy:
High-quality training for all reading leaders, with an explicit focus on fluency and vocabulary.
Using data with more precision to support the use of high-impact interventions.
Ensuring effective, tiered interventions, including phonics-based approaches, for all secondary schools.
Supporting reading leaders to embed a thriving reading culture in each of their schools.
Developing rigorous measurement of the impact of interventions.
Our most recent New Group Reading Test results have strongly influenced the development of these five priorities. From summer to autumn results this year, reading standards across the trust decreased by seven percentage points, demonstrating summer learning loss. Secondary schools had an eight percentage point decrease, in contrast to primary schools, where there was a negligible decrease in reading ability over the summer.
Most concerning to us was that Year 11 data showed the number of pupils reading at chronological reading age has dropped by a considerable 14 percentage points. These insights are invaluable: the work and focus of raising achievement for Year 11s has become even more pressing in the run-up to summer exams.
The scale of the reading challenges across our network means we can not rely on assumptions and hope to improve outcomes; we must take decisive action. For all of our schools, over time, this will require a shift in thinking to allow for improvements in curriculum and culture as well as an understanding of the science of reading.
We must not only rely on evidence-based practice but also cultivate a collaborative culture across our schools, which is precisely why the reading leaders network plays a pivotal role. It sets the conditions for collaboration for our schools to work together towards improvement.
Collective progress is critical in achieving AET490, and we rely on harnessing the collective expertise of our 57 schools to drive advancement across our network. A connected culture that leverages our resources, time, and talent will help to turn individual efforts into coordinated action. Network responsibility is key to ensuring that every AET child receives their entitlement to have a love and proficiency for reading.
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