Reading fluency should be central to improving white working-class outcomes
By FFT Education
Paul Charman, managing director at FFT, has written for Schools Week on why reading fluency needs to be at the heart of efforts to improve outcomes for white working-class pupils.
Responding to the Independent Inquiry into White Working-Class Educational Outcomes, Paul argues that one of the inquiry’s recommendations deserves particular attention: its call for a much greater focus on reading fluency. You can read the full piece on the Schools Week website.
What FFT’s data shows
His argument draws on FFT’s own analysis of more than one million reading fluency assessments, taken by over 230,000 pupils in primary schools across England. As with most work in this area, the analysis uses eligibility for free school meals to identify disadvantage – the closest practical measure we have for the white working-class group the inquiry is concerned with.
The findings are clear. White disadvantaged pupils start Key Stage 2 behind their peers in reading fluency, and they finish it behind too. By the end of Year 6, one in three is still reading below ninety words correct per minute, compared with one in five non-disadvantaged pupils. Ninety words correct per minute is a common benchmark for the fluency a child needs to access the wider curriculum.
Most striking of all, the gap barely narrows across the four years pupils spend in Key Stage 2.
This matters because fluency is what allows children to move from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”. Once pupils can read accurately, confidently and automatically, they are far better placed to handle the increasingly demanding texts they meet in every subject. When they can’t, the difficulty doesn’t stay in English lessons – it follows them into history, science, geography and maths, and it affects their confidence, their engagement with school and, ultimately, their attainment.
Why phonics alone isn’t enough
A decade of national focus on phonics has brought real and welcome improvements, and schools deserve enormous credit for them. But decoding words is not the end of learning to read. Too many pupils still leave primary school without the fluency they need to make the most of the curriculum or to read for pleasure.
Reading fluency is not a silver bullet. Poverty, attendance, teacher quality and wider social factors all shape outcomes for disadvantaged children. But it is an area where the evidence is strong, where we know what kind of intervention works, where progress can be measured, and where individual schools and teachers can make a real difference. For any child, leaving primary school as a fluent, confident reader is one of the strongest foundations for success at secondary.
Where schools can start
If we are serious about improving outcomes for white working-class pupils, reading fluency is one of the best places to start.
Read Paul’s full article on the Schools Week website and find out more about FFT’s Reading Assessment Programme.
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