Introduction

Main findings

From the data available so far, there are reasons to think that the reading ability of students has held up remarkably well in comparison to previous years. The main score we use in NGRT is called the ‘standard age score’ (SAS). Student attainment is benchmarked to a norm group of performances from children of the same age who are representative of the student population.

In a typical year, without the impact of Covid-19, we would expect little variation from a mean score of 100 within a population. Any movement greater than 3 SAS points is deemed significant when considering such large datasets. As you can see from the table below, students’ scores declined a little in primary schools – down 1.9 points last year compared to a rise of 0.5 in 2018-19.

Table 1: Average variation in NGRT mean SAS for the periods 2018-2019 and 2019-2020

Nonetheless, the overall picture is clear – children’s reading ability does not appear to have been significantly affected by the disruption caused by the pandemic, regardless of type of school. Primary school children seem to have been affected a little more than secondary school students, but not significantly.

Using the same data, we can see that in 2018-19, 43.6% of primary schools registered a drop in students’ SAS scores and 56.6% a rise. Last year during the pandemic the proportion that saw a drop in their overall scores increased to 78.3% while the number who witnessed a rise correspondingly fell to 21.7%. In secondary schools the decline was less severe. In 2018-19, 46.9% had registered a fall in mean SAS scores and 53.1% a rise. Those proportions were almost exactly reversed a year later during the pandemic – with 53.4% witnessing a fall in scores and 46.6% a rise

Table 2: Percentage of schools with increased or decreased SAS for the periods 2018-2019 and 2019-2020

What are the implications?

Reports from individual schools and Trusts across the country appear to back up the broader picture. All of the teachers and school leaders interviewed in this report say that the reading ability of the majority of their students met – and sometimes exceeded – expectations. Many said they had expected the worst after so many school days were lost to the pandemic, but that they have been pleasantly surprised at how resilient their students’ reading abilities were.

This was particularly the case for schools with large numbers of Pupil Premium students. Nationally there was a small decline compared to non-FSM according to our data. In the schools covered in this report, most FSM children seemed to do well – and while overall the gap with non-FSM didn’t narrow, it didn’t widen significantly either.

Does this mean that schools can assume that reading ability was largely unaffected during lockdown? No, because although overall scores haven’t declined significantly, we did see increased variability of school SAS scores, which suggests wider fluctuations in individual student performance. Teachers at Wickersley School and Sports College in Rotherham, for instance, report that while the better-than-expected scores at the top of the ability range kept the school’s overall reading performance high, they masked to some extent the difficulties students experienced at the lower end of the ability range. It was a similar situation with all the schools in this report.

Nor should it be assumed that all the components of reading have been absorbed equally well. If decoding and reading recall appear strong, can the same by said of inference and comprehension?

By the third lockdown, all the teachers interviewed said their schools had vastly improved the quality of online instruction. Even so, they accepted that teaching remotely was not the same as interrogating remotely. As one teacher in Blackpool said: “Interventions need to be a bit more in-person and personalised, and that’s been difficult to do through a screen.” 

Her remarks underscore the importance of schools conducting assessments as soon as is practicable and benchmarking them against the baseline. That should give a more detailed insight into reading behaviours and enable teachers to decide which child needs what support.

Conclusion

Despite the many disruptions and challenges schools have had to face this past academic year, teachers and students appear to have coped remarkably well, especially when it comes to instilling literacy.

Fears were also expressed during the pandemic that any negative impact on student literacy would have a knock-on effect on the wider curriculum. Last year we published a report - Read All About It - that highlighted the strong correlation between reading ability and eventual exam success in a range of subjects.

As reading generally appears to have been minimally impacted, there is no reason to suppose that access to the wider curriculum has been curtailed. In fact, anecdotal evidence suggests that many schools have noticed an increase in students’ text-based skills during the pandemic, probably because most teaching and learning depended on text-based assignments rather than multi-modal delivery.

However, this relatively positive overall picture should not lead us to conclude that the pandemic has had no impact on children’s reading. Some students have undoubtedly suffered, and their reading ability has been impaired. Nor is it always obvious who has been worst affected or how – if recall has proved resilient, is the same true of comprehension, for instance?

Teachers have told us that the pandemic and measures taken to alleviate its worst effects have often made it impossible to investigate what specific support individual children need or to put in place the necessary interventions. Where baseline NGRT data is available, benchmarking students’ progress as they return to the classroom is proving helpful. But many schools are now keen to assess their students as soon as is practicable to enable them to pinpoint exactly what children have learnt during lockdown, what has failed to stick and what teachers need to do address any gaps in their learning.