Plot twist: The Trust where every character plays a leading role

A coherent literacy strategy embedded in every school and driven and shared by each department was crucial in helping one Trust in County Durham sustain reading progress during lockdown. Sarah McCarthy and Catherine Taylor explain how

Highlights

The Advance Learning Partnership consists of five secondaries and one primary school in County Durham and caters to communities with some high levels of deprivation.
Literacy has become central to the Trust’s culture and has cascaded down to each school and every department. This includes training each department on NGRT data as well as giving them specific reading strategies that they can use in their disciplines.
Three elements have proven crucial: Keeping the profile of reading and literacy high, collaboration, and sharing best practice.

Students at Advance Learning Partnership schools in County Durham have had a challenging year, much like their counterparts in the rest of the country. But much like their peers elsewhere, they are taking the pandemic and its consequences in their stride.

“On the whole, students have coped really well,” says Sarah McCarthy, Assistant Headteacher at Parkside Academy and Literacy Coordinator for the Trust. “They’ve even improved in certain respects – lockdown has helped them develop their independence, for instance.”

Her colleague Catherine Taylor, Director of Quality of Education at ALP, agrees: “Overall students have been very resilient during the pandemic, they’ve adapted to online learning, taken things in their stride.” Reading ability in particular has not suffered as much as staff anticipated: “It’s held up well, largely because of the rigorous work and interventions that were put in place and the efforts of teachers to ensure standards didn’t slip.”

Catherine says that wasn’t true of every student; some coped better than others. “Those who weren’t fully engaged received additional support. But there was a big shift from lockdown one to lockdown two, when we moved to all online lessons delivered live and the curriculum was replicated. Keeping the same structure and routines helped us to secure high levels of engagement.”

A ‘whole school’ reading approach

The Durham duo’s perception of how literacy has fared at ALP during lockdown is in line with our countrywide analysis – overall, student reading scores have declined slightly across the country but not significantly, and less so in secondaries than primaries. And while students who had struggled with reading have tended to struggle in lockdown, average and above average ability students have met – or even exceeded – expectations.

Catherine says ALP, which has five secondaries and one primary and caters to communities with some high levels of deprivation, was able to weather lockdown well because it already had a robust literacy strategy in place. It was at the heart of the Trust’s culture and had cascaded down to each school and every department. “Our philosophy is every teacher is a teacher of literacy. That’s an ethos we’ve developed across the Trust – in a very collaborative manner – and the staff are completely engaged and on board with that.”

At the start of the first lockdown, she says, the Trust conducted technology and literacy audits to determine which students might need the most support. It gave out dongles and laptops to children who needed them and upskilled those who weren’t familiar with computers. Best practice was quickly shared in online staff meetings between and across schools and learning adapted in the light of experience.

The literacy strategy was key

The foundation of their schools’ reading resilience, as far as Sarah and Catherine are concerned, is that a comprehensive, strategic plan was already in place before lockdown with a focus on reading. “We wanted a systematic, Trust-wide approach to reading,” explains Sarah. “So we correlated New Group Reading Test (NGRT) with CAT4 scores to identify students in need of additional support. Strengths and weaknesses were identified, cohorts were compared across our schools and then benchmarked to the national picture.”

ALP assesses students twice a year with NGRT, at the start and at the end, with additional assessments for ‘spotlight’ students, those who may require further investigation and support. “Once we’ve received the data, we ask the literacy lead in each school to meet with their head to go through the key findings, but also to relate them to that school’s specific context so they can formulate an action plan that will lead to improvement,” Sarah says.

Ensuring the findings from the data aren’t compartmentalised is key to the strategy. “We want all departments in the school, regardless of subject, to use the findings and to embed disciplinary literacy,” she says. “We want reading to be a focus of every teacher, in every classroom in every school. So the SLT embed the literacy strategy into their procedures – learning walk throughs, work analyses and so on – to determine if the reading CPD given to staff has fed into the lessons and resulted in progress.”

Giving all staff literacy CPD

The action plan developed by the literacy leads for each school incorporates substantial CPD for staff, which includes training on NGRT as well as giving them specific reading strategies that they can use in their disciplines. “At my school, for instance, we had a session for staff on how they could teach vocabulary remotely,” Sarah says. “We had someone from science model literacy in their subject, and someone from maths do the same in theirs and so on.”

Literacy awareness and training cascades down to each level – school, department, classroom, and ultimately individual students. “Each department within each school has a literacy link,” says Sarah, “They are crucial because it means they can deliver whole school CPD into a very palatable form for their subject-specific context.”

Heads of department ensure that their quality assurance procedures take into account the NGRT data – so schemes of work are fluid and literacy CPD are drip-fed into departmental meetings.

Vocabulary lends itself well as component of literacy strategies, she points out, because every subject will have its own key words. “It’s about making it relevant for each subject and purposeful – it’s never been a one size fits all approach.”

Variations in performance

Inevitably, not all students have fared as well in their reading as others over the past year. “There have been variations,” says Catherine, “which is why the NGRT data has been invaluable – to see those patterns.”

Sarah agrees and says there have been variations by school, too. “Progress of FSM students and boys in particular is a key priority at my school, Parkside Academy. We’ve focused on those groups in Year 7 to ensure they have the cultural capital to eventually access the GCSE curriculum. All the schools use the same NGRT data but have flexibility to use it within their own context.”

“Finding out exactly what students have learnt when they have been studying remotely is challenging,” says Catherine. “It’s uppermost on our minds as children return to school – assessments will help us to identify gaps in learning and we will put in place the necessary interventions. But some students have thrived during remote learning and we’ve got to be careful not to jump to conclusions. It will take time to understand the impact of lockdown and we are focused on ensuring that students receive the appropriate support for all aspects of their learning and personal development.”

Student wellbeing

Although their students are delighted to be back in school again, because they’ve missed their teachers and being able to socialise with their friends, lockdown wasn’t an equal burden for all of them.

“I’ve noticed that some of the quieter students have really flourished,” says Sarah. “Lockdown seems to have removed a bit of the peer pressure and they’re more willing to contribute to chat online. They’ve gained in confidence, which I didn’t expect to happen.”

The Trust is trialling PASS, a tool that measures pupils’ wellbeing in learning, at one of its secondary schools and its primary for the first time this year, says Catherine. “It’s been extremely useful to make the connections between PASS and NGRT. If students say, for instance, that they feel confident or not in aspects of their learning we can match that to their reading scores in NGRT and see if there is any correlation.”

Lockdown has forced ALP’s schools to adapt and innovate – with some surprising results. “We’ve actually found real opportunities through adversity,” says Catherine. “For instance, one of our schools has set up an e-library, so children can download books from home.” There was also much more use of pre-recorded lessons and revision topics, which have proved beneficial and will continue to be developed and shared across the Trust.

Priorities for the term ahead

As ALP’s schools return from lockdown to in-person teaching, they are focused on what support their children need next. “Right now, we’re focusing on reading strategies,” says Sarah, “and then it will be more about the explicit use of vocabulary and linking it back to reading. More generally it’s about transferring what we have been doing remotely back to face-to-face teaching. One of the things we’ve come up with is a reading reward scheme. As students can no longer move from class to class because of Covid restrictions, we encourage them to read for five minutes between lessons, which adds up to an extra half hour daily.”

Encouraging reading for pleasure was a priority for ALP during lockdown and will remain so. “At our primary school the boys are flourishing in reading and we wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a dip in reading motivation when they move up to secondary,” says Catherine. “Research suggested that boys tend to be turned off by the narrow focus on reading for exams - and we wanted to broaden access and opportunities for reading.”

The Trust also takes care to model good reading behaviour and to ensure that everyone reads for pleasure – from the headteacher down

Advice for other schools

What advice would they give other schools when it comes to reading strategies?

Catherine says three things are crucial: “Keeping the profile of reading and literacy high, staff collaboration, and sharing best practice. You have to ensure reading has a high profile and that it remains a consistent focus – so don’t lose sight of that. Collaboration too is crucial. We’re stronger together, and the input and expertise from staff from every school has been incredible – we wouldn’t have been able to come up with all the ideas on our own.

“Finally, being able to share what has worked has been very powerful. We use research to inform all of our training programmes at the Trust – using the research in combination with effective use of the NGRT data has enabled us to make a positive impact on student outcomes.

Share

Find out more about our reading assessments

Ongoing assessment of your students’ reading allows you to identify any gaps they may have - and our New Group Reading Test® (NGRT) is an ideal starting point. NGRT is a standardised, termly assessment that reliably measures reading skills against the national average, and it can be used alongside other assessments to pinpoint where support is needed and demonstrate the impact of your interventions.

Find out more

Find out how we can support you

We offer a broad range of training and support options, to help you get the most out of your assessments and build a complete picture of your students’ strengths and needs. We also have a dedicated Assessment Insights team to assist you in making the best use of your assessments. Vikki, our Secondary expert, is on hand to answer any questions from talking through what your data is showing you to which reports are most useful for your school’s needs.

Find out more