LMCC Impact Study – Shevington High School 

Creating a curriculum change to deliver improved reading 

skills for Year 7 and 8 pupils on a minimal budget. 
 

Context 

Shevington High School is a smaller than average sized secondary school in Wigan. The 
school receives its pupils from a large number of primary schools in the Wigan and 
Lancashire area. The school’s roll has been growing in recent years at a time of great 
financial hardship for schools which seems to be felt more intensely in smaller schools. 
The school has always received pupils with a full range of ability: from the most able to 
those who enter secondary school well below the standard expected at the close of Year 
6. The school also receives a number of pupils who have performed well in Year 6 SATS 
but record reading ages well below their chronological age at the beginning of Year 7. 
Despite this, the school has typically maintained GCSE results in English above the 
National average.   

LMCC Project 

I believe that tackling literacy issues quickly is important before pupils risk becoming 
disengaged with a secondary curriculum that they struggle to access, however, with 
severe budget restraints, implementing interventions beyond classroom teaching has 
become even more challenging. The greater challenges of the new GCSE and 
disappointing performance in the first year of the new GCSEs heighted the desire to 
ensure gaps in learning were addressed as soon as possible. As the new SLT lead for 
Literacy this year, I was provided the opportunity to rethink prior approaches to literacy 
development and being given the opportunity of linking this to the LMCC project 
provided additional support and challenge to the thinking behind the initiative. Whiling 
previous initiatives had had some success, staffing changes and financial restraints 
meant that I had to design something different. It was therefore crucial to embrace the 
principle of abandonment; ending previous initiatives that were no longer going to work 
well given the constraints, and try something new. The LMCC sessions encouraged 
thinking around the concept of abandonment and this was very helpful in accepting the 
fact that it is often a good idea to remove some initiatives in order to make room for new 
ones which may have a greater long term impact. 

Planning 

In preparing to refocus the leadership of Literacy at the school, I needed support in 
identifying possible pathways to lead successful literacy interventions. It was important 
that the strategy selected would have impact quickly, so the National Literacy Trust’s 
Secondary Literacy Research and Policy Guide​ was incredibly helpful. The values 
represented by the Literacy Trust echoed our school’s values and I was determined that 
pupils’ life chances would not be reduced due to poor literacy skills. The focus group for 
the project was approximately 10 Year 7 and 11 Year 8 pupils who had the lowest 
reading ages in the school at the time of their last test, but were not in receipt of specific 
support through the EHCP. These are children that could easily be ‘lost’ in a system 
which struggles to fund interventions for those who have weak skills but are not 
determined to have a ‘special need.’ It was intended to widen the strategies used to a 
wider audience once the success of the interventions had been measured. LMCC again 
introduced the idea of introducing a small pilot scheme before scaling up the project. In 
the past, I think I had felt that small scale projects which only impacted on a small 
group of pupils, were to be avoided – they wouldn’t show enough impact to justify the 
time and resource dedicated to the initiative. Again, discussions through LMCC helped 
to dispel that myth and in reality, having gone through the process, trialling an 
initiative and removing problems with it along the way, is obviously a much better way 
to approach curriculum change. 

I needed to find an intervention strategy which would support our other systems: high 
quality first teaching, Accelerated Reader and encouraging reading for pleasure​. ​ Many 
pupils in our focus group struggle to do the kind of independent reading required by 
Accelerated Reader due to their very low reading ages. The National Literacy Trust’s 
Research and Policy guide, ‘Supporting literacy through interventions’ proved to be very 
useful. Links to the ‘Literacy and Numeracy Catch Up strategies documents’ and the 
work of the EEF helped to confirm the fact that lower cost per pupil strategies could be 
successful and cost efficient. Alongside Accelerated Reader, I had trialled of IDL 
Learning in the summer term and the engagement of a selection of pupils was 
encouraging. I could see how this programme could support reading, spelling, writing 
and typing skills and pupils might be able to do this independently with minimal 
support from a non-specialist. Crucially, this was also within our budget. 

The progress for the new intervention would be measured using the testing provided 
through the IDL programme, but also using GL Assessments NGRT reading test which 
we already used to screen pupils. The importance of an independent baseline 
assessment outside of the IDL programme’s testing was crucial to track progress. Pupils 
were tested in July 2017 and would be retested in March 2018 and again in July 2018. 
The main anticipated obstacles were in implementing the strategy with a member of 
non-specialist staff leading it who had no experience of intervention in reading. Due to 
staffing restraints, this was the only member of staff made available to me to oversee 
the initiative. Research suggested someone with a specialist ​‘​knowledge of literacy’ who 
was likely to be a strong ‘nominated learning mentor’ would lead to the greatest impact, 
however the individual in question did not really meet either criteria. In addition to this 
problem, the reluctance of pupils to engage with additional literacy work when they 
already knew they were performing at a low level in this area was likely to be a barrier. 
These were problems that I would have to overcome. 

Progress with the Project. 

During implementation, only one member of staff was made available for two twenty 
minute slots during registration time in the morning. I didn’t feel that a weekly slot for 
each year group would be sufficient – but this was all we had. There were mixed 
responses from students – some worked diligently and independently – others tried to 
avoid sessions and arrived late at first. Had the member of staff overseeing the initiative 
been more passionate about literacy and the reasons why it was so crucial to help these 
students, then I believe these barriers would have been quickly overcome. It was 
frustrating not to be able to just go and lead the sessions myself, but my time had been 
allocated elsewhere. Furthermore, I felt I needed to avoid slipping into past habits of 
just doing something myself if I wanted it done, and actually finding a way to lead the 
change without actually implementing it all by myself. 

After a few weeks of the project, it was clear that the staffing issue needed to be 
resolved. When a member of staff left, an experienced Teaching Assistant who had 
worked on literacy intervention previously became available and took over the sessions. 
I knew her impact would be immediate and it was! She had both specialist ​‘​literacy 
knowledge’ and made a very convincing ​‘​nominated learning mentor.’ I also secured an 
extra session per week, so each group had two sessions. I wrote to parents to try to gain 
support from home in supplementing the work done at home and requested that parents 
read with their children. The teaching assistant also engaged 3 year 9 pupils to work as 
pupil mentors which we knew had worked in the past. With the additional sessions, the 
motivation of an inspirational TA leading the intervention pupils started to recognise 
their own progress. Testing using IDL’s tests suggested that some pupils had made 
massive progress from their starting point. 

Tracing the progression. 

As the project progressed I wanted to see hard evidence that it was having the desired 
impact. IDL testing for individual pupils showed progress but this only tested decoding 
skills and I wanted to see improvement in comprehension skills as well. The NGRT test 
would confirm comprehension progression as well and would allow me to compare 
progress from the baseline tests in July 2017. The same test would be repeated in July 
2018 allowing the analysis of a year’s progress. 

NGRT  NGRT  NGRT 

July  March  Change over  July  Change over 1 
Name  2017  2018  6mths  2018   year 
Yr8 Pupil 1   6/11  8/4  1yr 5mths  10/0  3 yrs 1 mth 
Yr8 Pupil 2  6/10  6/11  1mth  7/2  4mths 
Yr8 Pupil 3  6/7  8/10  2 yrs 3mths  8/6  1yr 11mths 
Yr8 Pupil 4  6/8  7/10  1yr 2mths  7/1  6mths 
Yr8 Pupil 5  8/2  7/5  -9mths  9/10  1yr 8mths 
Yr8 Pupil 6  6/1  8/4  2 years 3 mths  12/1  6yrs 
Yr8 Pupil 7 
Thomas 
Robinson  7/7  9/3  1 yr 8 mths   Absent  1yr 8mths 
Yr8 Pupil 8  7/7  8/8  1 yr 1 mth  10/3  2yrs 8mths 
Yr8 Pupil 9   9/0  9/5  5 mths  12/1  3 yrs 1 mth 
not 
Yr8 Pupil 10   10/0  12/4  2 years 4 mths  retested  2 yrs 4 mths 
not 
Yr8 Pupil 11   10/3  10/5  2 mths  retested  2mths 
Yr7 Pupil 1   6/1  8/4  2 yrs 3 mths  6/6  5mths 
Yr7 Pupil 2  Left 
Joshua Baron  6/8  7/2  6ths  School    
Yr7 Pupil 3  6/11  8/10  1 yr 11mths  10/3  3 yrs 4mths 
Yr7 Pupil 4   6/1  6/3  2mths  6/6  5mths 
Yr7 Pupil 5   6/2  6/0  -2mths   6/2   0mths 
Yr7 Pupil 6   5/0  9/0  4 yrs  6/7  1 yr 7mths 
Yr7 Pupil 7   6/1  6/7  6mths  Left   Left School 
Yr7 Pupil 8   6/1  7/10  1 yr 9mths  8/10  2 yrs 9mths 
Yr7 Pupil 9 
(started later)  8/0  8/8  8 mths  10/3  2 yrs 3 mths 
Yr7 Pupil 10 
(started later)  9/10  10/11  1 year 1 mth  12/4  2 yrs 6mths 
 

In March, although most of the pupils still achieved reading ages below 10, there was 
clear progress for most pupils. Of the 21 pupils, 16 pupils made 6mths or more progress 
in their reading age. 12 pupils made more than one year’s progress and 5 pupils made 
more than 2 years progress. Considering the short amount of time that pupils had 
working on this intervention and their initial lack of engagement, the results were very 
encouraging. More importantly, the pupils were pleased with their own progress and 
many were motivated to continue their work in order to improve further. Of the 2 pupils 
that did not progress one was an EAL student who has made good progress with 
decoding words, however comprehension may need longer to embed. Two additional 
year 7 pupils joined the group just before the March testing on request of their parents. 

By July all but one pupil had progressed from their starting point. 12 pupils had 
progressed well beyond 1 year chronological progress. 9 of these had improved by 
between 2 yrs and 6yrs in their reading age. 4 pupils had not maintained the reading 
age that they achieved in March, but had still ended the year with a higher reading age 
than they started with. (The extreme heat of July 2018 may to some extent explain the 
lower scores of some pupils as not all pupils were in the best mind-set or situation when 
retaking the tests). 8 pupils ended the year with a RA above 10 years meaning that they 
should now be functionally literate. The two pupils who had been added to the group on 
the request of parents, who did start with slightly higher reading ages, made very good 
progress, making more than 2 years progress each in about 6 months of involvement 
with the programme. 1 pupil did not make progress, although he has now become more 
invested personally in improving his skills and I feel he will progress next year. 

Next Steps 

LMCC has really refreshed and supported my thinking about curriculum change. Prior 
to this course, I felt like small initiatives might be viewed as only a half-hearted attempt 
to make a change, whereas now, I see the value in using a small pilot, adjusting the 
planning based on the findings and then scaling it up to a wider audience as 
appropriate. Even if an initiative remains small, it can still have a positive impact on a 
number of pupils who would not otherwise have been helped. Since this was a literacy 
initiative: something relatively simple, but something incredibly powerful in terms of 
supporting the ‘Whole Education’ of individuals if literacy could be improved and in this 
case it did really help many of the pupils involved. I feel privileged to have seen the 
change in these individuals. The effect on the individuals seems to have been wider 
than just on their literacy skills, as many of them have wished to continue with the work 
even after they gained enough competency to leave the programme, they wanted to 
continue and did so with pride and a smile on their faces. 

I have also confirmed in my mind, the importance of allocating the best possible staffing 
to initiatives like this. The power of a skilled and motivated member of staff to 
implement the initiative is crucial. Also, unsurprisingly, if the member of staff involved 
can engage and create buy-in from the pupils, their progress increases. If I had not 
secured a staffing change part way into this initiative, I do not think it would have been 
so successful and if I met the same situation again, I would have tried to make the 
change earlier to secure the success of the project. 

Moving forward, I now need to find a way to sustain this change and ideally manage to 
scale to project up so that more pupils with reading ages below their chronological age 
can benefit from this life changing opportunity. Given the resourcing shortages, it might 
be possible to do some of this through engaging some parental support and home 
learning. The fast progress of the two pupils with slightly higher reading ages who were 
supported in the initiative by their parents was also very encouraging and an area to 
develop further. I am determined to sustain the change beyond the end of my 
involvement with LMCC. Hopefully, I will also apply the leadership learning and 
reflection opportunities that I have gained to other leadership challenges in the coming 
year.