Bitesize Research: Children Owning Books

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week! Continuing our thinking about literacy and communication, and in line with forthcoming plans we have for World Book Month, I was interested to see this research summary released by the National Literacy Trust about children and book ownership. We are planning to give every child in the Academy their own book (more details to come) as part of our first-ever “WA’s Big Read” and we are excited for them to be reading and exploring these in TTBs later in T4! Objectives: To look at trends and correlations between children’s book ownership and other important measures Summary:

• Children who own at least one book are much more likely to be engaged with reading, and six times more likely to read above their reading level
• 6% of children in the UK don’t have a book of their own at home
• A greater proportion of Pupil Premium children have no books at home (9.2%) compared with their non-disadvantaged peers (5.3%)
• Ownership of books at home also correlates with reading frequency and enjoyment

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How does this research make me reflect on my role as a teacher and as a tutor?
• How often am I discussing reading with my tutees?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Impact of COVID on attainment

This week, I wanted to share with you something I found to be a very helpful summary of available research on the impact of COVID on student attainment from the EEF.

Objectives: To understand the impact of COVID-19 on student attainment broadly, but also on disadvantaged students from a range of existing studies.

Summary:  

The key overall themes are:

• Students have made less progress compared to previous year groups
• The attainment gap between disadvantaged students and their non-disadvantaged peers has grown

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

 

• How can I use this information to support identifying gaps in knowledge and looking to redress them?

• What classroom or school strategies might best enable rapid progress to be made to ‘catch up’?

• Do I know who my disadvantaged students are? What are their current barriers to learning? How can I use available resources to support them as much as possible?

If anyone would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: The KS3 Years and Disadvantaged Children

The third week in T3, I wanted to share with you the work of the Nuffield Foundation on disadvantage in early secondary education (KS3 in the traditional sense of YR7 to YR9) published in December 2020.

Objectives: To examine what, if any, impact the KS3 years have on attainment and progress for disadvantaged children. They looked at lots of factors, but most notably ones connected to family income and attendance.

Summary:  

• There is significant evidence to suggest that a number of educational inequalities widen between disadvantaged children and their peers across KS3. This includes attendance, attainment and progress worsening for disadvantaged children across KS3.

• The gaps in students’ self-reported outcomes also widen, particularly pertaining to attitudes towards school, perception of academic ability, aspirations for careers and further education.

• Identifying and supporting higher prior attaining disadvantage students on entry to secondary school made a difference in creating higher GCSE attainment 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

 

• Do I know who my disadvantaged students in KS3 are? Do I know who my higher prior attaining disadvantaged students in KS3 are too? If not, how do I find this out?

• How can we support KS3 students to mitigate against some of these widening inequalities from YR7-9?

• How can we work to improve student self-perception across KS3? What has worked well? What could we try differently?

If anyone would like to discuss this further with Jaya - please do comment below! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.