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Background
Four years ago Rudyard Kipling Primary School and Nursery was identified as one of Brighton and Hove's lowest achieving schools with regard to literacy. In the league table of primary schools across the city, it was placed in the bottom seven.
In 2010 the school decided to invest in Every Child a Reader (ECaR), and since then it hasn't looked back. The only problem was that, despite the positive impact of Reading Recovery, the demand for targeted support far exceeded the school's capacity to supply.
Actions
The school continued to invest and steadily established a team of individuals dedicated to ECaR. This comprises two Reading Recovery teachers, two teaching assistants teaching Fischer Family Trust Wave 3, two teaching assistants teaching Better Reading Partners (one in Key Stage 1 and one in Key Stage 2), one teaching assistant working on Write Away Together and another on Hi Five. In addition, the Reading Support Network (voluntary team of parents, carers and adults from the local community) provided support for children to ensure that gains were maintained. Teaching assistants and volunteers receive Continuing Professional Development, and this extensive team is based in a designated ECaR room, with responsibility split between the two ECaR teachers.
Obviously, all of the above had to be combined with a rigorous approach to Quality First Teaching. Pupil Progress Meetings (PPMs) took place at the end of each term with an interim meeting at the mid-point of each term. The ECaR teachers joined the head teacher, deputy, SENCo, literacy and numeracy coordinators and class teachers to discuss and monitor the progress of every child in the school. Tracking documents were submitted prior to these meetings, and liaison between class teachers and the ECaR team was used to inform this process.Tracking documents used a key indicating intervention support received by individual children at any point in their schooling. This has ensured that gains made through intervention have been tracked, monitored and any necessary remedial action taken. The school is currently in the process of converting to using School Information Management System and Excel, which will enable filtering of ECaR children and make the monitoring of children regarding maintaining the gains even easier.
Following the PPMs, the ECaR teachers and SENCo/Link Teacher would meet to provision map for those children identified as requiring intervention. We created a 'Venn System' as a tool to aid this process, which provided a clear picture of the literacy level of each child relative to national expectations. Although this system was only introduced in September 2013, it has already proven to be an invaluable tool in the provision mapping process and paves the way for the allocation of children to the appropriate intervention.
Conclusion
In direct response to the impact of ECaR, Rudyard Kipling Primary School and Nursery is now proudly placed in fourth position in the city's league table, and is in the top 250 schools nationally for our success in closing the gap for children from deprived backgrounds.
Whilst we are obviously delighted with this outcome, we are striving to build on these successes. Our current mission is to further develop and formalise the communication between class teachers and the ECaR team, ensuring greater sharing and observation of teaching practice and children's performance in both the classroom and ECaR setting. We are optimistic that this will further enhance successful transition for every child and have a further positive impact on Quality First Teaching and targeted intervention working in unison.
