This month has brought two major announcements from the Department for Education. The first was that the government will be launching Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority.
The second was that 2026 will be a , as the government aims to get parents, schools, libraries, businesses and literacy experts together to discuss how to promote reading and literacy.
Of course, reading for pleasure is a wonderful thing. It gives you access to the very best of what has been thought and written. Reading to your children is, as study after study shows, hugely impactful, with a host of benefits.
Pupils struggling with reading
But when we think about reading, we have to go further. There must be a relentless focus on raising standards for one key group: those who are already struggling to read.
As the government acknowledges, over a quarter of pupils are leaving primary school not meeting the expected standard in reading. This goes up to 40 per cent for white, working-class pupils, and 59 per cent for those with special educational needs. And as our data shows, many of these pupils will never catch up.
Here’s a useful way of thinking about it: until about Year 2, a child is learning to read.
Chunks of the school day are devoted to ensuring that a child is literate, and there is a phonics test at the end of the year - assessment always serves to sharpen priorities in schools.
Reading to learn
But after Year 2, a child is primarily reading to learn.
Engagement with the rest of the curriculum is predicated upon reading, so it doesn’t matter how broad, balanced, rich, knowledge-based or skills-heavy you make the curriculum; if you can’t read fluently, you can’t engage.
This reverberates into other parts of life. If you can’t read fluently, you’re not only locked out of the curriculum, you’re also almost certainly locked out of reading for pleasure.
You’ll earn less: as new DfE data shows, better reading and writing at primary school results in £65,000 of additional earnings over a lifetime.
You will find reading to your children far more difficult, and in many cases this cycle will continue.
What it takes to turn things around
So what does it take to get these pupils on track? What would it look like if we decided to turn this around, and make sure pupils are reading confidently and fluently at critical points in their education?
Well, we know. Over the past five years, FFT Education and the Fischer Family Foundation have for more than 60,000 primary pupils, with a focus on driving up reading standards.
From our data, we believe that around 30 hours of small-group, personalised and high-quality early reading support at the right time helps most pupils to reach a level of reading fluency needed to enjoy reading and access the curriculum.
A worthwhile cost
We know what this costs. For £75 million per year, England could provide 30 hours of reading support to all of the pupils who are behind in a cohort, and cut the number of pupils who are currently behind in half. That would mean many more young people being confident readers, able to engage with the curriculum, able to go on and read in their adult life.
In the scale of government policy, this is not a huge amount of money. We could halve the number of pupils behind in key literacy skills for a fifth of the recently announced .
The renewed focus on reading at the start of young people’s education is a welcome one. But it’s not going to help those who are already behind in reading and unlikely to catch up. Intervening for this group has the potential to unlock reading and learning for those who need it most.
Celebrating reading and promoting its joys is necessary, but not sufficient. For the quarter of pupils who are already falling behind, the challenge is urgent and practical. We know what works. We know what it costs. Now we need the will to make it happen.
Mike Fischer is founder of the Fischer Family Trust
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