In his book Reading Reconsidered. Doug Lemov highlights the necessity of pupils reading harder texts and argues for a “steady exposure” to them in secondary school as being “critical to success later on”. And he is absolutely correct.

We cannot expect to set our pupils up for the complex nature of texts that they will be required to read at college, university, or even in employment, if we stick like glue to those old “accessible” favourites that sit on all of our bookshelves. And this goes for primary teachers, as well as secondary.

Recently, at the ResearchEd conference in Rugby, Rebecca Foster (@TLPMsF) explained how she had revamped her school’s key stage 3 curriculum for English after finding a text entitled My Darling, My Hamburger in a store cupboard. Rebecca displayed the book’s front cover and blurb - every bit as cringe-inducing as you might imagine - to the equally horrified and amused audience.

She used this to highlight how the unchallenging nature of these class readers is wholly insufficient to prepare students for GCSE. She is right. We need to stop underestimating our pupils, shun these mediocre texts, and instead build our students’ resilience in reading texts which we perceive to be more difficult. Who knows, they might even enjoy it.

As a new cohort moves into Year 7 this September, we must support their transition by ditching the idea that just because pupils are 10 or 11 years old, they are not able to read challenging texts. We must raise our expectations and ensure that our teaching enables every pupil (regardless of their reading ability or socioeconomic factors) to access these texts.

Laying the foundations

I observed a recent Twitter debate between primary and secondary teachers, arguing whether Shakespeare, and other texts of equal difficulty, should be taught at KS2. Some less optimistic teachers were shocked; they couldn’t believe that primary pupils would be able to read - let alone comprehend - these complex texts.

Others had actively taught a full Shakespeare play at primary and felt that the benefits of doing so were immeasurable. There are clearly important arguments for both sides, but what we have to remember is that the increased difficulty of the new GCSE is now being filtered down into KS2; students are expected to be able to do more and more. As teachers, it is our job to ensure they are adequately prepared for this.

Ultimately, KS2 lays the foundations for secondary school. Having a secure comprehension of plot, themes, characterisation or even the historical factors of a text, would significantly improve students’ ability to decipher and decode challenging texts later on.

I would argue that a secure knowledge of Oliver Twist, for example, is much more beneficial than that of Holes. In my view, understanding the complex patterns in language and syntax used by Dickens, as well as a significant era in British history, is superior to understanding a fabricated tale of the American judicial system and an age-old family curse.

Going forward, secondary schools and their feeder schools must build relationships with one another so that class reader choices at KS2 have some impact or influence on those choices at KS3.

Primary teachers shouldn’t be afraid to deviate from those old ‘safe’ favourites and tackle a thornier text; they should ignore the negativity of their disgruntled colleagues who don’t like change, and instead systematically expose students to more complex texts early on to ensure that they are well prepared for transition to secondary.

Laura Thorne is assistant head of English at Redbridge Community School in Southampton. She tweets @lauthorne