heart of heartlands lessons

Scenario, July 2014

At the end of another long school year, a ‘crack’ team, consisting of one excitable English teacher, a visionary HLTA, an outstanding Librarian, a slightly bemused Data Manager and a definitely exhausted member of SLT are ‘brainstorming’ (an activity eloquently described by Alan Partridge as “an American business technique in which ideas are graded on how loudly they're shouted”) names for the school’s new reading programme. Having found my original notes from that meeting (no clue as to which member of the team I was), some of the suggestions, which clearly weren’t shouted loudly enough, make for cringeworthy reading. ‘A Novel Idea’, ‘Dare to Dream’ and ‘Books are better than boys’ (all genuine suggestions) were eventually discarded in favour of the slightly less controversial and much more logo-friendly ‘Beyond Words’.

At the time, it simply seemed a catchy and (begrudgingly on my behalf, having thrown my unequivocal support behind ‘Dare to Dream’) quite clever sound-bite. However, over the past four years, and as the impact of the changes we implemented have come to fruition, I am more conscious than ever, that the impact of fostering a culture of reading genuinely does go beyond the words our young people read.

The statistics linking literacy and wellbeing make for depressing reading:

• 1 in 8 disadvantaged children in the UK say that they don’t have a book of their own.
• Only 57% of parents talk about a story with their child.
• Children in communities with the most serious literacy problems, have life expectancies 26 years shorter, than children from places with the fewest literacy problems.

Highlighting what the problems are and producing the evidence (often inaccessible to anyone below a PhD level) to prove it, are almost the lifeblood of the education sector. Not least because the more negative figures from these reports are almost always the most eye-catching. This makes them useful, particularly to those in opposition to the current system, as easy ammunition to chastise and critique. Unhelpfully, What it doesn’t do is offer solutions. To do this you need to ask for help. So we did.

Working in partnership with Renaissance Learning, the company behind the Accelerated Reader programme, was the first and perhaps most important step on our journey. The EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) report into the positive impact of Accelerated Reader contains one very important line: “to be effective, Accelerated Reader requires space in the timetable and an increase in the number of books in the school library.” It was clear from our first meeting that if we were going to make a positive impact on the reading habits of our students, quite significant changes needed to made, both structurally and culturally. It simply wouldn’t be enough to ‘Drop Everything and Read’.

Obviously, a blog about the importance of reading wouldn’t be complete without an inspirational literary quote. So here it is (and from Confucius no less): “He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”. So we asked questions, lots of questions, many of them foolish. We asked Renaissance questions about how to utilise the huge amount of data we suddenly had. We asked:

• teachers, about the most effective way of using contact time;
• parents, about what support they needed at home; and,
• the students, about what really motivated them.

As is so often the case, we learnt more about how to engage young people in reading from our failures (sanctions work far less well than rewards for example), than we did our successes.

Having criticised others for not providing solutions, it would be hypocritical not to share the 5 key reasons we think Beyond Words worked.

1. Research: whatever intervention you decide to use, it’s imperative you scrutinise the numbers published. The EEF is a great place to start, but always check the efficacy and credibility of any research yourself.
2. Financial planning: make sure you can afford to implement the programme as you have it planned. For example, our library stock analysis showed we needed to increase our library stock by nearly 1,000 books in order to have enough of the correctly levelled books for our students.
3. Utilise your experts: we are very fortunate to have an immensely knowledgeable and passionate Librarian. School Librarians are often depressingly underused, but they are the most important ingredient in running a successful reading programme.
4. Create competition: our Head of Maths came up with the concept of creating Beyond Word Leagues for each tutor group in the style of football leagues, including weekly Dream Teams, promotion and relegation.
5. Celebrate success: from day one, we rewarded our students who opted in. This can be as small as tutors giving merits, organising reward meals with the school leadership, early lunch passes, or if funds allow, giving out more expensive prizes - we used Kindles!

That we have had success is down in the most part, to the support we received from the leadership of the school, the professionalism and resilience of the staff, the insight of our librarians and most importantly of all, the ambition and desire for the success of our students.

So 4 years on - 64,578 books, 320 certificates, 15 kindles, 45 word millionaires, 3 Secretaries of State and 1 Ofsted Inspection - what have we learned? Simply put, to create “responsible, resilient and reflective readers”, you need to be each and every one of those things.

For more information:

https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/literacy-and-life-expectancy/ - literacy and life expectancy

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/574925/PISA-2015_England_Report.pdf - PISA 2015 report

http://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R60818.pdf - What kids are reading report - Heartlands focus.