Schools should focus on improvements to core classroom teaching that support all children in the class. With this in place, the need for catch up intervention should decrease. Nevertheless, some high-quality, structured intervention may still be required for some pupils to make progress. Selection of the intervention should be guided by effective assessment of pupils’ individual strengths and weaknesses.
Interventions should happen early, both because literacy difficulties can affect performance in other areas of the curriculum, and in order to reduce the risk of children developing negative attitudes and anxiety about reading and writing.
Interventions should include explicit and systematic teaching. This could include providing models of reading fluency, interventions with decoding words and talk to write. It must also incorporate frequent review of impact.
Effective implementation is essential to success. Interventions require careful planning and use of school resources, including staff. The best designed programme will not work if teaching staff are unavailable, excessively overburdened, or not adequately trained to deliver the programme.
Ensure that connections are made between intervention and whole-class instruction. Interventions are often quite separate from classroom activities. The key is to ensure that learning in interventions is consistent with, and extends, work inside the classroom and that pupils understand the links between them.
How effective is the intervention program at ensuring that pupils make good progress?
How well is information about pupils’ skills and progress shared between staff?
How do staff adapt teaching and learning strategies for pupils receiving intervention and what is the quality of the training that teaching assistants delivering the intervention programme receive?
How well is assessment used to inform decisions about whether pupils remain in support programmes or no longer need intervention work?
How do you ensure that classroom teachers are aware of the teaching and learning strategies and the resources used in the intervention programmes?
What strategies do you use to ensure teachers are confidently using similar strategies and resources in their lessons?
Add the following resources here:
Intervention programme evidence review
EEF intervention