Reading outcomes in English schools have made for some negative headlines recently. We have heard that phonics alone is not enough, that pupils are struggling with reading fluency and comprehension, and that fewer young people are reading for pleasure.
Over the past six months, we have visited seven of our partner schools across different phases and contexts, and we continue to visit schools to understand the great practice that already exists across the country. The staff we spoke to told us that the responsibilities for improving reading were often resting on the shoulders of middle leaders.
But leading whole-school literacy initiatives is a mammoth task. It requires the time, enthusiasm and expertise of more than just a single person. So we visited trusts and schools where the leading of reading was having a positive impact, to find out what they were doing differently.
More on literacy:
We found some clear patterns. In trusts and schools where reading is improving, senior leaders create the conditions for literacy to be led, taught and supported effectively. Literacy leaders can be effective only if they are supported by effective leadership from the wider senior team.
To see what this looks like in practice, this week we’ve published a set of case studies entitled Leading Reading: putting evidence into practice, which break down the principles that make reading instruction effective, and explain how leaders and teachers put these into action.
So, how do effective school and trust leadership teams create the right conditions?
They prioritise literacy
We saw that the most effective trust and senior leaders prioritise literacy by including it in improvement plans, championing it in trust-wide or senior leadership meetings and ensuring that literacy is planned as a whole-school strategy. They also build dedicated teams to enact that strategy across the school. For example, one school has provided access for all leaders and teachers to high-quality professional development on literacy, so that colleagues are all speaking the same language.
They provide resources
Allocating budget to developing literacy knowledge among staff and investing in resources - such as books, libraries and visualisers - was seen to have a hugely positive effect. The best leaders also carved out time for literacy, which could include extra space in the timetable for reading, space in the professional development calendar for literacy, or time for literacy leadership networks across the trust.
These leaders also support educators in building the knowledge and skills they need to become effective teachers and leaders of literacy, for example, via staff professional development sessions. These include deliberate practice of effective approaches, which involves isolating these teaching practices, rehearsing them outside of the classroom and improving them through feedback.
They take a long-term approach
More than anything, we saw that school leaders need to be prepared for the implementation of literacy initiatives to take time. There is no quick fix. The best approaches follow the principles of effective implementation, as outlined by the Education Endowment Foundation. When leading literacy, this includes fully understanding the most pertinent problem, exploring the best evidence-informed solutions for your context, and allocating sufficient time and resources to lead to lasting change.
They support the development of literacy by creating and maintaining it as an ongoing strand of improvement plans. This is necessary because staff will leave and new colleagues will need training. The evidence base will be updated, and pupil cohorts, needs and experiences will also change.
At all of the schools where school and trust leaders supported literacy, we saw:
- Knowledgeable staff at every level, using shared language and understanding to support pupils’ development of reading.
- Consistently high-quality reading instruction, including lots of opportunities for pupils to be read to, read with and talk about reading with others.
- Significant improvements in pupils’ reading ability, which were measured through improvements in pupils’ performance on standardised reading assessments, triangulated with pupil outcomes and other internal data.
When leaders of trusts and schools take practical steps like these, they create the enabling conditions for leaders of literacy to be effective. This makes it much more likely that they will be able to meaningfully improve the teaching and learning of literacy across the whole school.
Sarah Bagshaw-McCormick is associate dean at Ambition Institute and Sarah Scott is head of literacy at Ambition Institute
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