City gives its pupils intensive help with reading

Hull Council has trained up specialist reading teachers in half of its primary schools who now provide one-to-one tuition to children who are struggling.

However education bosses have warned that this work could be set to come to an end from next year as its funding through the national Every Child a Reader programme – worth around £500,000 over the past four years – is running out.

In the latest league tables measuring 11-year-olds performance Hull was the joint lowest-ranked education authority in the region along with Wakefield.

Schools in both cities were in the bottom five in a league table of 150 council areas across England, based on this summer’s standard assessment test (Sats) results.

Just under a quarter of 11-year-olds in both Hull and Wakefield did not reach the standard expected of the age group in reading and writing and just under a third failed to make the grade in both English and maths.

For the past four years Hull Council has been employing “reading recovery” specialists to train a teacher in half of its primary schools to support those pupils who need extra support to help them read.

This work has been focused on children at the beginning of primary school and has been credited with a major improvement in the number of seven-year-olds getting to the standard expected of their age group in key stage one Sats tests. Since 2008 the number of seven-year-olds in Hull reaching level two has risen by seven per cent to 81 per cent.

In the next two years the first group of children to receive extra support will sit their key stage two Sats as 11-year-olds.

This year’s tables from key stage two Sats place Hull in the bottom five nationally, however education bosses hope the one-to-tuition delivered to pupils at the beginning of primary school will help improve the city’s ranking in future.

Jackie Spowage, who is leading the scheme said: “Hopefully if we have done our job well the expertise will remain in schools and we will have given children some of the building blocks they need.

“The work we have done through Every Child a Reader has been very successful at key stage one.

“We train teachers over 12 months. It is not something they do for a few weeks.

“They then spend half an hour everyday with children who need it. The pupils with the greatest need are getting the best teaching.

“Teaching ‘phonics first’ is being promoted as the best way to start children learning to read and although this works for the majority of children it does not always meet the needs of those who we are working with.

“The Government are promoting it because it provides a good base for children.” However she said that some pupils were more reliant on understanding what words meant in order to learn them while others would not be able to associate the sound with a word and would not benefit from only being taught phonics – which focuses on getting pupils to associate letters with sounds.

The one-to one tuition carried out in Hull schools can also help teachers to identify pupils who are dyslexic.

The reading recovery training is aimed at getting teachers to identify how children are able to learn. Mrs Spowage said this approach allowed schools to help pupils who were dyslexic as well as those who were struggling to read but did not have a learning difficulty.

The work to promote reading in schools had also looked at instilling a love of reading among boys and girls.

Traditionally primary school age boys have been thought of as being more difficult to engage in reading but Mrs Spowage said the number of books which were available aimed at getting boys’ interested was beginning to change this.

The Every Child a Reader programme funding ran for three years and came to an end this year.

However Hull Council has been able to stretch the money to keep it going through 2011/12.

Now a decision will be taken on whether to continue the programme without ringfenced Government funding.

The Hull Schools Forum – which is made up of head teachers, local authority officials and union representatives has carried out a consultation exercise on the future of the work and is set to make a decision about it next month.

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