Can Struggling Readers Catch Up Quickly? Completely?

If you are worried about your students with reading problems, these case studies will give you hope.

Students who have fallen well behind in their reading by the time that they reach secondary school tend to remain well behind their peers. One of the worst outcomes of the education system is that, after eleven years of full-time education, about 70,000 16-year-olds are added each year to the estimated 7.1 million functionally illiterate adults in the United Kingdom.

No one wants this outcome, but how do we prevent it? Remediation of such reading problems starts with identifying every student at risk, and then ensuring that they catch up quickly and completely.

We’ve written about effective screening systems here, and why the rate of catch-up needs to be fast enough to minimise curriculum loss here.

The following case studies demonstrate how quickly students can catch up to their peers.

Case Study 1

In 2023 we partnered with a school in North London. To date, 16 of their students have graduated from the Thinking Reading programme. At the start of the programme, one student’s reading age was assessed as 7 years behind their chronological age. All the students were reading two or more years behind. All 16 students have now caught up completely.

• The average number of 30-minute one-to-one lessons it took to catch up was 32.
• One student caught up in just 15 lessons.
• The average gain was over 4 years.
• All results were confirmed by standardised testing.

We love hearing these success stories. But we are not surprised. Our promise to our partner schools is that the students they think can’t learn to read, will learn to read. Not only that: they will catch up rapidly — and completely. The effects on self-esteem, confidence and resilience are remarkable.

Case Study 2

We partnered with an 11-18 secondary school in Kent who were determined to eliminate illiteracy in their students. Recently they shared that:

• 24 of their students have now graduated from the Thinking Reading programme.
• The students have gained between 2.5 years to 8 years in their reading.
• The average gain was 5 years in 33 half-hour lessons.
• That’s 120 years of reading gain in 396 hours.
• All results were confirmed by standardised testing.

It’s worth noting that according to some studies, getting a student to complete secondary school successfully is worth at least £250,000 to society. In those terms, this school has added £8,000,000 in value, just in this dataset. Quite why policymakers ignore the economic benefits of ensuring that all students can be taught to read is a mystery.

The Thinking Reading programme teaches more in less time, using teaching methods that have strongly validated research bases. As a result, where these principles are applied diligently, extremely rapid progress is possible.

Case Study 3

A partner school in Sussex, whom we trained last autumn, has already graduated seven students.

• Five caught up completely in 3 to 4 months.
• Two, who were further behind, gained 5.5 years in 6 months.
• The average rate of progress was 1.9 months per lesson.
• The average gain was 3 years.
• All results were confirmed by standardised testing.

Students CAN be taught to read so that they catch up quickly and completely. When this happens, children learn not just that they can be good at reading, but that they can be good at learning.

If you are ready to see this kind of impact for your weakest 10% of readers – contact us.