Primary schools urged to join Year 6 reading fluency trial

Primary schools throughout England are being invited to take part in a trial to assess the impact of reading fluency support on reading comprehension and SATs outcomes for struggling Year 6 students.
 
180 schools will take part in the trial in the 2024/25 autumn and spring terms to evaluate the impact of HFL Education’s KS2 Reading Fluency Project on pupils not currently on track to meet reading expectations by the end of KS2.
 
The trial has been funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) through the Department for Education’s Accelerator Fund, which aims to expand the use of evidence-based programmes in schools across England.

Penny Slater, Education Development and Partnership Lead at HFL Education (formerly Herts for Learning), said: “We know that ensuring all children can read with skill, confidence and enjoyment matters to teachers.  When we enable our children to read well, we give them the opportunity to learn more about their own lives and the lives of others – as well as open doors to unlimited knowledge, joy and wonder.
 
“Our Reading Fluency Project has shown promise in improving reading skills for students working below age-related expectations. Through this EEF funded trial we can gather further insights and knowledge about reading fluency which can be used to better support schools to achieve improved outcomes for all pupils.”
 
HFL Education’s KS2 Reading Fluency Project is a targeted intervention designed to improve reading comprehension for pupils in upper Key Stage 2 through techniques such as prosody (the patterns and sounds used in the English language), echo reading (where the teacher reads first and the child repeats), and text marking. Over 2,200 pupils have taken part in the reading programme to date.

Speaking about their involvement in the project, a spokesperson from EEF commented: “We identified developing reading fluency as a high impact approach in our KS2 Literacy Guidance Report, however to date EEF has not evaluated many programmes that specifically focus on improving reading fluency. The approaches to the teaching of fluency included within this project align with the evidence base on how to teach oral reading fluency and provides schools with a clear and structured approach.

“Given the importance of reading comprehension, and the potential of HFL’s KS2 Reading Fluency Project, we have commissioned this study to understand the impact of this approach on pupils at scale.”

The EEF-funded reading fluency trial will focus on the impact on between six and eight Year 6 pupils per school, and applications are now open for schools interested in taking part. Verian has been appointed as the evaluation team for this study, which will be conducted through a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) to give an accurate measure of the impact of the project.

Applications are now open for the Reading Fluency Project trial, with places allocated on a first come, first served basis. Visit the trial information page on the HFL website or email readingfluency.eef@hfleducation.org for find out more or to sign up.