Blog four: let's talk about literacy learning

Image courtesy of NTU - Students in Classrooms project

Evidence based learning strategies are all the rage now, with Theresa May last week announcing that school breakfast would be offered nationwide in primary schools off the back of the fantastic Magic Breakfast project run by the Education Endowment Foundation (an organisation once described to me as “the best £140 million Gordon Brown ever spent after finding it down the back of the treasury’s sofa”). Magic Breakfasts proves a 2-month improvement-boost in skills in children in KS1 over the course of the study, although the reasons for this, a healthy breakfast, activities at the breakfast club or a child’s preparedness to work after being eased in during the club’s session, are less clear cut. I must also point out that this ran in conjunction with free school meals for these children and the impact of this proposed cut has not been measured (but this isn’t a blog about politics...).

In my travels in the US, I’ll looking at EEF’s evidence too, particularly in terms of how we encourage literacy engagement in children in primary/elementary schools. Good literacy skills provide us with the building blocks not just for academic success, but for fulfilling careers and rewarding lives. Yet despite our best efforts, a disadvantaged child in England is still more than twice as likely as their classmates from more advantaged homes to leave primary school without reaching the expected levels in reading and writing.

Nottingham and Nottinghamshire has issues with low attainment in core English and literary KPIs in Key Stage 2; only 61% of children in the city and 65% in the county achieving expected standards in reading in 2016. This drops further to 58% and 57% for children with English as a second language, to 53% and 48% for children identified as disadvantaged and to 50% and 43% for children eligible for free school meals. The East Midlands is join third-bottom, barely above Yorkshire and Humber and the West Midlands, in regional attainment (all figures from DfE 2015 stats). Now, as a UNESCO City of Literature and an ambitious county of literacy, we can and should find ways to unlock the potential in our under-12s.

The best way to break this link between family income and educational attainment is through better use of evidence: looking at what has — and has not — worked in the past can put us in a much better place to judge what is likely to work in the future. The EEF have put together two guidance reports to support literacy teaching in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 which propose key principles for effective literacy teaching that make significant difference to pupils’ learning and include:

• focusing on pupils’ speaking and listening skills by encouraging them to read books aloud and have conversations with their friends about them;
• a balanced and engaging approach to developing reading, which integrates both decoding and comprehension skills;
• promoting fluent written transcription skills by encouraging extensive and effective practice and explicitly teaching spelling;
• targeting teaching and support by accurately assessing pupil needs; and using high-quality structured interventions to help pupils who are struggling with their literacy.

This will form the basis of what I’ll be trying to look at in the US – plus I’ll also investigate the application of skills and strategies in five core education areas: Arts Participation, Digital Technologies, Oral Language Interventions, Reading Comprehension Strategies, and Social and Emotional Learning. In the research, again by EEF in their Teaching and Learning Tool-Kit, implementing and using correctly these 5 areas of curriculum support can achieve as much as 20 months additional learning impact.

These headlines will not come as a surprise. They are probably already a key priority in most schools. This means there are unlikely to be easy solutions or quick fixes. It’s my hope that my assessing this in a system which is new to me that I can collate ideas and effective methods into a “tool-kit” evidence-based literacy programme for Nottingham that will ensure as many pupils as possible, regardless of social or geographic background, can read and write well.