Intervention for Dyslexia - The British Dyslexia Association

‘accelerated progress’ children were consistently at this level at the end of Key Stage 1,
i.e. they are still beginning readers, despite the early intervention. 12
At level 2b (the national ‘target level’) children are ‘almost entirely accurate’ in their
reading. 35%–40% of accelerated progress children and 28%–34% of all children
completing programmes reached this level. Importantly, it is not until Level 2a that
children are ‘able to tackle unfamiliar words’. There is ample research evidence that
ability to tackle unfamiliar words is the distinguishing feature of children whose word
recognition processes have developed into a self-sustaining system which, as Clay
herself described, “continues to accumulate skills merely because it operates” (Clay,
1979, p.5). With this in mind, one might consider attainment of Level 2a in Key Stage 1
reading National Curriculum assessments as the best indicator of the effectiveness of
Reading Recovery: children achieving Level 2a have self-sustaining word recognition
systems, which put them beyond the fear of failure in terms of ability to decipher new
words in a variety of content areas. But only from 9% to 13% of accelerated progress
children and 8%–10% of all children completing Reading Recovery achieved Level 2a.
Children achieving Level 3 have completed work on establishing a fluent and selfsustaining
word recognition system and read with good understanding. They have
moved on from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’. This level was (perhaps
understandably) achieved by fewer than three in a hundred Reading Recovery children.
The goal of Reading Recovery, as stated in is annual reports is “… for children to
develop effective reading and writing strategies in order to work within an average
range of classroom performance” (Douëtil, 2007a). In order to examine whether this
goal has been achieved, patterns of performance of the 2005–06 and 2006–07 Reading
Recovery cohorts (Douëtil, 2006, 2007a) have been compared with the patterns of
performance of all children in England in 2006 and 2007 Key Stage 1 National
Curriculum assessments, respectively. The results are presented in Figure 8 (2005–06)
and Figure 9 (2006–07) 13 . Note that the patterns of performance for Reading Recovery
children are highly similar to those shown for the two earlier cohorts in Figure 6 and
Figure 7.
Because ‘accelerated progress’ Reading Recovery children were as likely as all children in
England to achieve Level 2 or above in Key Stage 1 National Curriculum assessments, it
appears that the Reading Recovery target of children being able to work “within an
average range of classroom performance” has been met. However, the goal was not
met when all children completing Reading Recovery programmes are considered:
Reading Recovery children were 10 percentage points less likely than all children in
England to achieve Level 2 or above. Furthermore, it has been shown above that
children achieving Level 2c are, in terms of the descriptors for that sublevel, still
beginning readers: as with the earlier cohorts, 32%–35% of ‘accelerated progress’
children and 29%–31% of all children completing Reading Recovery programmes
achieved Level 2c, compared with 13% of all children in England.
12
Smaller proportions (27%‐31%) of all children completing Reading Recovery achieved Level 2c, as more
of them were at Level 1 or Working towards Level 1.
13 Note that published DCSF statistics, from which these data have been obtained, do not give separate
figures for levels W, 1, 2b or 2a [2006: www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000672/index.shtml] [2007:
www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000740/index.shtml].
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