This article was originally published on 20 November 2023

A question I have been asked a lot recently is: “What is a good test to use to get a reading age?” 

Inevitably, this is a consequence of the recommendation in the new version of the DfE’s reading framework, which suggests that students with a reading age of 9 or below would benefit from more phonics teaching. 

Although it is helpful to try to be more precise about when we might intervene and give children additional support in reading, there are some problems with using reading ages in this way.

My response to the question usually starts with another question: “What do you want to measure and why?”  

What does a ‘reading age’ really show?

There are many different reading assessments available for schools to use, and each test measures something different.

A test based on reading lists of individual words will give insight into how a child might tackle words in isolation (word reading, or decoding), but it will tell us nothing about how they comprehend text. 

Similarly, a sentence-reading test might help us understand how a child understands vocabulary or individual sentences, but it will give no insight into how they construct meaning across several sentences, paragraphs or a complete text.  

Passage comprehension tests will vary by the types of questions they ask and the way the child responds, providing different insights into the reading process. 

So, using different tests may well give us different reading ages for the same child, subject to their skills as a reader. Depending on the test, a child may have a reading age of 9, 10, 11 or 12.

In this situation, which one should we trust?

Are reading ages reliable?

It is also worth considering how reliable a reading age is in the first place. Jessie Ricketts, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, does not believe they are helpful for teachers. 

Her research with secondary school students suggests that the normal attainment range for a child aged 14 years old could be anywhere between a reading age of 10 and one of 17 or more. 

Students scoring below their chronological age do not necessarily have difficulty with reading; they are just on the lower side of normal for their age. A recent study by Emma James and colleagues suggests that reading comprehension difficulties should be considered more as a continuum, with multiple risk factors involved.

Finally, it is worth considering what a reading age actually tells us. It does not tell us where the child has strengths or areas of weakness. It gives no indication of what will support the student in their next steps.

Trusting teachers 

Reading ages may even lead to unwarranted assumptions that a student might not need further opportunities to develop their reading.

Just because a student scores highly on a test and is ascribed a reading age far above their chronological age does not mean the child should not be continually supported to develop their reading or be introduced to texts that are beyond their maturity. Just because you can read something does not mean you should.

So, if we want to be able to identify children who may need further support, reading ages may not be the seductive panacea they appear to be.

Rather, we should use a range of assessments, including norm-referenced tests to understand how a child achieves in relation to others of the same age.  

It would be worth trusting the hunches of teachers and then using assessments diagnostically to explore how a child is reading and where any possible difficulty might be. 

After all, both children and reading mean so much more than just a number.