This presentation explores what research and inspection tell us about effective assessment, curriculum and pedagogy for secondary-aged pupils who need to catch up urgently with reading. We also share how we inspect this aspect of a school’s work.

1. Secondary pupils who need to catch
up with reading
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2. Purpose of this slidepack
 This slidepack comes from a series of webinars for schools in
2022 and 2023.
 We want you to take information about Ofsted directly from us
rather than relying on third-party and often expensive sources.
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3. Where you can find our information
 The only guidance and materials you need for an inspection is
the guidance and materials that Ofsted produce. We publish a
variety of content to support you.
 https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted
 our inspection handbooks which outline our policies and processes on
school inspections
(https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-inspection-
framework).
 other guidance documents intended for schools and our own inspectors
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4. Where you can find our information 2
 Other resources to support school leaders and teachers:
 Ofsted’s YouTube channel
(https://www.youtube.com/user/Ofstednews)
 SlideShare (https://www.slideshare.net/Ofstednews)
 Education inspection blog for schools and further education and skills
(https://educationinspection.blog.gov.uk/)
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5. Overview of the session
A high-quality reading curriculum.
Assessment of reading.
Pedagogy choices for teaching pupils
who need to catch up with reading.
How inspectors will evaluate reading.

6. Published reports and blogs on reading
Reports
 Research review series: English
 ‘Now the whole school is reading: supporting struggling readers
in secondary school’
Blogs
 ‘Supporting secondary school pupils who are behind with
reading’
 ‘Thousands of year 7s struggle with reading’
 ‘Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities who
have fallen behind with reading’
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7. Education recovery
Secondary schools
have increased their
focus on helping pupils
to catch up in reading.
Preventing pupils from
falling any further
behind is an urgent
priority.

8. Background
 Our Covid recovery publications told us that many secondary
schools have had to place an increased focus on helping pupils
to catch up in reading as a result of disruption to learning due
to the Covid-19 pandemic.
 Leaders told us that many more pupils are not reading well
enough for their age. Weak reading skills are affecting pupils’
ability to access learning across the curriculum.
 It is therefore critical that reading is a priority for schools and
inspectors if we are to prevent pupils from falling any further
behind with their education.
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9. Background
 We know that reading is fundamental to educational success. It
is the gateway to learning across the curriculum and is key to
pupils’ future academic achievement and well-being.
 However, while secondary schools have noticed this issue
worsening as a result of the pandemic, it is an ongoing issue.
Y6 reading outcomes tell us that more than 1 in 4 pupils are not
at the expected standard with reading when they start
secondary school.
 Research also tells us that it is important to get reading right
from the start - and this is the reason we carry out a reading
deep dive in all schools with primary aged pupils.
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10. Common weaknesses we have seen
 Schools do not always have a systematic approach to identify
which pupils, on entry to Y7, are having difficulties with reading.
 Where assessment does happen it is not always helpful in
identifying what pupils are struggling with, e.g. whether they
use phonics to read unfamiliar words and which grapheme
phoneme correspondences they have or haven’t grasped.
 A lack of identification or further assessment then leads to
pupils either not receiving tailored support or not receiving any
support at all.
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11. Common weaknesses we have seen
 Leaders are sometimes unsure whether they should allow pupils to miss
other lessons as they fear that it will be narrowing a pupil’s curriculum.
 It is essential that reading is prioritised so pupils can access the full
curriculum. Not prioritising reading is limiting the curriculum which
pupils can access.
 Some leaders are managing to prioritise reading without narrowing pupils
access to a wide range of subjects, for example by:
 rotating the subject missed
 making use of English lessons to catch up with reading
 using registration time or time just before the start of school.
 Leaders also need to make sure that any reading intervention is effective
enough so that pupils catch up quickly and soon benefit from participation
in the full curriculum.
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12. Common weaknesses we have seen
 Schools do not always have a team of staff, including leaders, with the
expertise needed to deliver additional support for pupils.
 This of course then leads to leaders not being able to check that the
support is having the desired impact.
 Just having a reading intervention is not enough.
 Leaders need to make sure it is successful in enabling pupils to quickly
catch up. It needs to be an urgent priority to enable pupils to access the
full curriculum.
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13. A high-quality reading curriculum
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14. To fulfil the demands of the secondary curriculum,
pupils need to be able to read age-appropriate
fiction and non-fiction texts fluently.
Slide 14

15. What does it take to become a fluent reader?
Accuracy
Decoding unfamiliar words
by saying the sounds
corresponding to the letters
and blending the sounds
together.
Automaticity
Reading familiar words ‘at a
glance’. Pupils develop this
by re-reading words that
they have first sounded out
and blended.

16. Becoming a fluent reader
 Pupils need to be able to read words accurately and
automatically. These are the two main components of fluent
word reading.
 Accuracy: pupils need to be able to decode unfamiliar words
by saying the sounds corresponding to the letters and then
blending the sounds together.
 Automatic word reading: pupils need to be able to read
familiar words accurately, silently and speedily.
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17. Becoming a fluent reader
 The right sort of practice and the right amount of practice will then
enable them to read accurately and automatically.
 By re-reading words again and again, pupils increase their bank of
familiar words, so that they can read them ‘at a glance’.
 It may appear that pupils are reading these words having memorised
them by sight but, importantly, if they have been taught phonics as
their go-to strategy for reading unfamiliar words, these words will
have been processed through sounding out and blending.
 The reason this is so important is that there is no limit to the amount
of words pupils can read if they have first been processed through
phonics.
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18. Accurate word reading – understanding the
alphabetic code
Regardless of age, special educational need or background,
the same knowledge of the alphabetic code and phonic
skills underpin all reading.
Phonics represents a body of knowledge, not a pedagogy.
The curriculum does not change but
the pedagogy might.

19. Accurate word reading – understanding the
alphabetic code
 Accurate word reading starts with understanding the alphabetic
code – that the letters on the page represent the sounds in
spoken words.
 Phonics represents the body of knowledge needed for word
reading (and spelling) and is, therefore, not a pedagogy.
 Extensive research shows how important teaching systematic
synthetic phonics (SSP) is until children can decode
automatically. Without this knowledge, pupils will not have the
means to read unfamiliar words.
 This is true for all pupils who are learning to read,
including those with SEND.
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20. Accurate word reading – understanding the
alphabetic code
 We know it is sometimes wrongly assumed that when older
pupils are struggling with reading, they must need something
different to phonics if it hasn’t already worked.
 The problem can often be seen as due to the child’s difficulty
rather than simply as a knowledge deficit.
 Study upon study shows that children who have been
diagnosed with developmental conditions learn to decode words
by relying on the same processes as other readers.
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21. Accurate word reading – understanding the
alphabetic code
 What is clear is that some pupils need more practice than others to secure
important phonic knowledge. This does not mean that phonics does not
work or that other strategies should be used instead or alongside.
 For pupils who have fallen behind their peers with reading, including those
who have SEND, teachers might need to think differently about pedagogy
choices.
 For example, they are likely to benefit from being taught in a small group,
free from distractions and with knowledge broken down into smaller steps,
with increased repetition and overlearning. Older pupils may need more
age-appropriate resources.
 The curriculum itself doesn’t change, but the activities and resources – the
pedagogy choices – to help pupils secure that knowledge might.
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22. Accuracy Automaticity Comprehension
Fluent word reading allows comprehension

23. Fluent word reading allows comprehension
 Comprehension comes back to the two key components of fluent
word reading again.
 Without accurate and automatic word reading, pupils’ reading will be
so laboured that pupils will struggle to understand the meaning,
even if they understand the words. Working memory overload makes
it very difficult for pupils to focus on making sense of the text.
 Once pupils become accurate and automatic with reading their
working memory is able to focus on comprehension and if they
understanding the meaning of what they are reading, they will be
able to comprehend the text.
 Together, these elements make a fluent reader. Fluency is the
bedrock from which pupils infer, make connections and analyse what
they read.
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24. Word reading
Language comprehension
Poor word reading
but strong language
comprehension
Strong word reading
and strong language
comprehension
Strong word reading
but poor language
comprehension
Poor word reading
and poor language
comprehension
Gough and Tunmer

25. Gough and Tunmer’s simple view of
reading
In Gough and Tunmer’s simple view of reading we can see the two
distinct aspects of reading – word reading (the accuracy and
automaticity we have just heard about – taught through phonics)
and language comprehension.
Pupils need to develop both language comprehension and word
reading if they are to read with comprehension (and get to that top
right quadrant). So reading with comprehension is the product of
both. Neither is sufficient on its own.
What is important is that both elements will need teaching
separately in the early stages – word reading through phonics and
language comprehension through reading and discussing a wide
range of books and studying a broad curriculum. The background
knowledge that is acquired from studying a broad curriculum
should not be under estimated.
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26. Gough and Tunmer’s simple view of
reading
It’s also worth noting that pupils who are still struggling to read
fluently by secondary school are likely to be in the bottom left
quadrant (where not only is their word reading poor but their
language comprehension too).
The impact of their poor word reading, over a number of years,
will mean that they have read far less than their peers and
will therefore have picked up less language, vocabulary
knowledge and ‘background knowledge’ in its entirety
from their reading and wider studies.
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27. When pupils become stuck
There may be some pupils who manage to just about get by in KS2 having
memorised many common words by sight and with some guessing
strategies applied to longer words. These pupils often flounder in
secondary school when the demands on their reading are greater and their
memory for whole words becomes overloaded. For example:
Circulatory
Photosynthesis
Anaerobic
Respiratory
Peristalsis
The important point is that they have no strategy for dealing with
unfamiliar words.
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28. When pupils become stuck
If pupils are having difficulty with reading longer unfamiliar words, it is
because they have not yet mastered the phonics code. They don’t have
the phonics knowledge they need to decode the words.
These pupils often struggle to read subject-specific vocabulary such as the
words on the slide which a pupil might encounter in science.
Difficulty in reading polysyllabic words is often an indicator of insecure
phonic knowledge – whether that is identifying the grapheme-phoneme
correspondences or with blending them to read the word.
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29. When pupils become stuck
There will be many pupils who are just not quite managing with the age-
appropriate reading materials they encounter in class. These pupils can
often read accurately but read so little, either for pleasure, or regularly in
lessons, that they do not build their fluency progressively to be able to
read increasingly demanding texts automatically. They struggle to get
through the sheer volume of reading needed in lessons.
This sometimes results in the situation actually getting worse for them.
When their teachers notice they do not have the reading stamina, they are
given less text, that has been simplified, or worse still, video input as it is
so much more accessible to all pupils.
What this group of pupils need is more reading practice of age-appropriate
materials, to develop their automaticity when in fact they can often end up
getting less and less practice, meaning they do not have readiness for
academic texts required for future study.
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30. An effective reading curriculum
Provides pupils with
the knowledge they
need for
comprehension.
Ensures that
pupils read a lot.
Is supported by
the careful choice
of increasingly
challenging texts.
An effective reading curriculum

31. Assessment of reading
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32. Assessment should check
Which pupils are
finding reading
difficult
Which aspects of
reading are not
secure

33. How you can find out which pupils are
finding reading difficult
 Information passed on from one key stage to the next will help.
 Results from reading tests help to rank pupils and so identify
those who are behind the majority of their peers.
 This is a starting point.
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34. How you can find out which aspects of
pupils’ reading are not secure?
 Many reading tests are not designed to identify whether pupils can read
accurately and automatically.
 It is fluent reading that allows comprehension.
 Therefore, it’s important to find out precisely what pupils are
struggling with.
 To start with, if you listen to pupils read aloud, you will get an idea of
how well pupils are reading age-appropriate books with fluency.
 For pupils struggling with accuracy, the most helpful assessments will
be those from your school’s chosen phonics intervention programme.
This will determine the extent of pupils’ phonic knowledge and
skills and identify precise gaps. You can then target these gaps.
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35. Pedagogy choices for teaching
pupils who need to catch up with
reading
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36. Prioritising additional teaching
Accuracy Automaticity
Language
comprehension
Reading with
comprehension

37. Prioritising additional teaching
 All this has implications on how schools can prioritising additional
teaching for struggling readers.
 On the slide above, on the left are the components of successful reading
comprehension – fluency in word reading (accuracy and automaticity) and
language comprehension – just as with the simple view of reading.
 The first priority should always be reading fluency if it is not
secure.
 Not only does fluency allow the working memory to focus on
comprehending a text, but once pupils can read fluently they can increase
their knowledge of language through their independent reading as well.
 Accuracy comes first, so if pupils aren’t reading accurately they will need
phonics. And once they are reading accurately they will need lots of
practice to build their automaticity. This will often involve reading aloud to
an adult who can monitor their reading.
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38. Prioritising additional teaching
 To secure pupils’ word reading takes staff with the right
expertise.
 It is difficult to provide in a classroom where others are learning
something else. It is therefore likely to need either
intervention/additional support out of class or to be delivered to
a group, or a class of pupils (who need to secure the same
knowledge) as part of their English teaching.
 Some schools prioritise time in English lessons (for example in
the first term of Y7) so that pupils quickly gain the prerequisite
knowledge to access the expected English curriculum with their
peers.
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39. Pupils who do not have a strong
understanding of language
 Most pupils who are not reading age-appropriate books fluently will have a more limited
understanding of language than their peers. They are unlikely to choose to read independently and
therefore are reliant on gaining knowledge of language through lessons across the curriculum
rather than also gaining it from their independent reading.
 However, it would be a mistake in most cases to focus any additional teaching or
intervention on developing language.
 Pupils’ understanding of language can still be developed while they secure their word reading. They
will gain knowledge of language through studying a broad curriculum, including having age-
appropriate texts read to them as part of their English curriculum so they can benefit from the
discussions and broaden their understanding of the vocabulary and concepts they contain.
 Additionally, developing knowledge of language is a crucial part of the curriculum in every subject,
so all lessons in all subjects will address this.
 To focus on language as an intervention that takes pupils out of their usual classes may not add
to their language development any better than if they had remained in the lessons in
the first place.
 There may of course be some pupils with SEND who need to access speech and language therapy
(SALT) additional support.
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40. Most pupils will catch up if they have the right
quality and quantity of practice
Pupils may need to miss other lessons while they catch up.
The amount of practice needed may differ for each pupil.
Pupils are likely to benefit from small group teaching with learning
broken down into small steps with plenty of repetition.
Phonics catch up should use a systematic, synthetic phonics
programme. For older pupils, a programme with age-appropriate
lessons and resources should be considered.
Adults teaching these pupils should have sufficient expertise.

41. How inspectors evaluate reading
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42. ‘All pupils are able to read to an age-appropriate level and fluency (if
not, they will be incapable of accessing the rest of the curriculum, and
they will rapidly fall behind their peers).’
School inspection handbook, paragraph 214
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43. ‘During all inspections, inspectors will be interested in how the
school supports pupils who are at the early stages of learning
to read, including older pupils. This is especially the case
because of the disruption to learning caused by the COVID-19
pandemic.’
 School inspection handbook, paragraph 241
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44. How inspectors evaluate the support for
pupils who need to catch up with reading
How effectively do staff use assessment to identify pupils’ difficulties with
reading?
Are identified pupils receiving targeted support which helps them to
catch up quickly?
Do leaders and staff have the expertise needed to deliver additional
support and check its effectiveness?
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45. How inspectors evaluate the support for
pupils who need to catch up with reading
 We know that reading is an integral part of learning in all subjects. And pretty
much all schools will have pupils who need additional support with reading.
 Therefore, all inspectors will be alert to reading in all parts of deep dives
in all subjects.
 The lead inspector will use the telephone conversation to find out what is in place
and to make sure that we speak to the right people on inspection.
 It may be the responsibility of an English leader or the SENCo – or someone
else.
 Because of this, when evaluating the quality of additional support, an inspector
may do this as part of a deep dive in English. But it may be more appropriate in
other routine activities such as a meeting with the SENCo. It will be different
school to school.
 We do not do an early reading deep dive in secondary. Evaluating support for
struggling readers in secondary is more likely to cut across a range of subject
deep dives and routine inspection activities.
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46. Ofsted on the web and on social media
www.gov.uk/ofsted
https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk
www.linkedin.com/company/ofsted
www.youtube.com/ofstednews
www.slideshare.net/ofstednews
www.twitter.com/ofstednews
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