Intervention for Dyslexia - The British Dyslexia Association

It is not until Level 2b that children are ‘almost entirely accurate’ readers. 48%–51% of
‘accelerated progress’ Reading Recovery children and 38%-43% of all Reading Recovery
children who completed their programmes achieved Level 2b or above, compared with
71% of all children in England in both years. Moreover, most of these Reading Recovery
children (35%–37% accelerated progress, 28%-31% all completed programmes)
achieved Level 2b, not any level above this. Only 12% of accelerated progress children
and 9%–10% of all completed programme children achieved Level 2a, and 3% or fewer
achieved Level 3, compared with 26% of all children in England.
At best, Reading Recovery enabled children to perform within the low average range
(2c) for their age, whilst about 30% of completed programme children remained
consistently at Level 1 or working towards Level 1, and only 10%–12% were working at
Level 2a or above. Remember, Level 2a is the level at which children can ‘tackle
unfamiliar words’ – the necessary feature that defines successful development of a selfsustaining
word recognition system.
The same exercise has been conducted examining the Key Stage 1 writing National
Curriculum assessment performance of children on Reading Recovery cohorts from
2003–04 to 2006–07, as well as comparing the 2005–06 and 2006-07 Reading Recovery
cohorts with National Curriculum assessment results of all children in England in 2006
and 2007. Without going into all the details, the results tell a similar story to the one
described above for reading. 25%-31% of ‘accelerated progress’ children and 36%-40%
of all children who completed their Reading Recovery programme scored at the lowest
levels for writing (Level 1 or Working towards Level 1). At best, Reading Recovery
succeeded in getting about 40% of children who completed their programmes into the
low average range of writing performance for their age (2c). A further 35%–40% of
children who completed their programmes were below this range. Thus, 75%–80% of
children completing Reading Recovery were low average writers or worse by the end of
Key Stage 1, with only two in ten writing within the average range (Level 2b) or above,
compared with six in ten of all pupils in England. Fewer than one in a hundred Reading
Recovery children (whether we count those making accelerated progress or all pupils
completing the programme) achieved Level 3 in writing, compared with 13%-14% of all
children in England.
5.5.3 Reading Recovery children’s standardised reading test results
The Reading Recovery annual reports for 2004-05 to 2006-07 also give measures of
children’s progress on the British Abilities Scales Word Reading Test, Second Edition
(BAS-II). For each of the three years the results published are identical: i.e. the average
reading age of children entering programmes was 4 years 10 months, and average
reading age of children of those who had been ‘successfully discontinued’ was 6 years 7
months (Douëtil, 2005, p.12; 2006, p.12, 2007a, p. 14). On the face of it, this looks like
good progress. However, before reaching this conclusion, two factors need to be
considered. First, 6 years 7 months was the average reading age of only those children
who responded well to Reading Recovery, and does not take into account those pupils
for whom Reading Recovery did not seem to be such an effective intervention. Secondly,
a child can achieve a reading age of 6 years 7 months on BAS-II with knowledge of only
a few words. To attain a reading age of 6 years 7 months, only 21 words on the test
have to be read correctly, which can easily be achieved by a child who has memorised
some very high frequency common words (e.g. the, up, you, at, said, out), and knows
and can use single letter sounds, plus the simple digraphs ‘sh’ and ‘th’. In other words,
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