Primary students learn to read. Secondary school students read to learn.

Religious Education is a core curriculum subject for Catholic schools and is 10% of curriculum time. It is taught rigorously, with all the same expectations as other core subjects. Our current Year 7 pupils are following the new Religious Education programme for schools in England and Wales published by the CES (Catholic Education Service), “To Know You More Clearly”. Most of our pupils come from Catholic feeder schools and a local Church of Wales primary. A minority of pupils come from local non-Catholic feeder primary schools.

As an experienced Head of Department, I have always believed that in primary school students learn to read, and in secondary school,  students read to learn. So how does a current Year 7 student read in our subject?

Here is an example from one of our Year 7 textbooks:

What do Catholics mean by the word revelation?

To Catholics, belief in God is a trinity is a mystery. They believe God reveals traces of this mystery through the created world and the Old Testament. However, the fullness of the mystery of the trinity was revealed in Jesus, the Son of God and through the Holy Spirit.

Revelation means being shown information which helps humans to learn about and know something. For Catholics, revelation means the ways in which God is made known to people, such as through showing God’s qualities. This is most perfectly done through Jesus, who Catholics believe God was in human form.  (Key Stage 3 Religious Education Directory: Source to Summit Year 7 Student Book – Oxford university press)

 

Vocabulary from this short text can be usefully divided into 3 tiers:

    Tier 1 – high frequency in spoken language (learn, world)

    Tier 2 – high frequency in written texts (mystery, fullness, revealed)

    Tier 3 – subject specific, academic language (trinity, revelation, Holy Spirit))

 

We would expect that when reading the text, Year 7 pupils would have some background knowledge about religious beliefs (tier 3 vocabulary –subject-specific) and be familiar with high frequency language.

To comprehend a text, you need to understand around 95% of the words. An average text contains 300 words a page so that means approximately 15 words may be unknown even if the gist of the text is understood. For a Year 7 student who cannot read well, the textbook excerpt will be challenging and incomprehensible.

Children who cannot read well find it difficult to keep up in RE lessons, but not only in RE but all their other subjects too. Reading is an essential part of almost every subject. How can children learn science or geography if they can’t access textbooks or worksheets? These children start and continue secondary school with a reading deficit that prevents them from accessing the Year 7 to Year 9 curriculum and impacts later upon their GCSE exam curriculum.

 

 

We know from secondary schools in Wales that there are many children starting in Year 7 unable to access the curriculum due to extremely low reading abilities. Estyn reported back in 2012 that, “Around 40% of learners enter secondary schools in Year 7 with reading ages significantly (at least six months) below their chronological age. Around 20% of these learners are not functionally literate, with reading ages of below nine and a half years.”

 

Anecdotal evidence from Year 7 teachers in our school  notice the variation in reading fluency and comprehension between cohorts of students from different primary feeder schools. This variation results in some students being better prepared to access the secondary school curriculum. This will no doubt be the case across schools in Wales due to the lack of curriculum specificity in reading instruction and guidance for teaching reading at a national level.

 

Research tells us that “Learning to read is a highly complex undertaking that is underpinned by two fundamental processes: word reading through the recognition and decoding of words, and comprehension of texts through a range of knowledge and skills.”  (EEF blog: Phonics – mastering the basics of reading, Caroline Bilton) These two processes must be included in a primary school’s curriculum to ensure that all students learn to read proficiently before they enter secondary school.

The best bet for achieving this aim is to use a Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme through which children learn to recognise letters (graphemes) and their associated sounds (phonemes), and develop the skills of breaking the word down into the smallest units of sound (segmenting) and blending them together quickly to read. The Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit finds that phonics approaches to teaching reading have, on average, a positive impact on pupil outcomes.

In 2021, in “A letter to Jeremy Miles, the new Minister for Education” Rob Randel, primary school teacher and Wales Advisor to the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction, and Terry Mackie, former Head of School Improvement and Inclusion for Newport Council criticise the new Curriculum for Wales for its lack of emphasis on mandatory Systematic Synthetic Phonics and that teachers should only be “aware of” phonics:

Wales, past, present and future, prefers alchemy to the science of reading. The Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) route taken by other countries for the teaching of reading has been, in stark contrast, evidence-based, supported by extensive professional training and crystal clear that in the Year 1 programme of study children will be taught to apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words in the first instance. Nothing is being left to chance. No ‘pick and mix’.

 

If we are to prevent our children from having deficits in reading that stop them from accessing the secondary curriculum then we urgently need to address the variation in reading instruction throughout Welsh primary schools and to ensure that all children receive what they are entitled to: the ability to read well. The Welsh Government must mandate the teaching of Systematic Synthetic Phonics and ensure all statements in the curriculum for Wales documentation align with this approach.

 

 

Sources

https://nation.cymru/opinion/a-letter-to-jeremy-miles-the-new-minister-for-education/

 

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/phonics

 

https://global.oup.com/education/product/key-stage-3-religious-education-directory-source-to-summit-year-7-student-book-9781382036320/?region=uk

 

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/phonics-mastering-the-basics-of-reading

 

https://www.catholiceducation.org.uk/schools/religious-education/item/download/80750_410287a8b2519cd3bd8c737c3e7e5fbd

https://learningspy.co.uk/literacy/closing-language-gap-building-vocabulary/

The NEU should support teachers in the removal of disruptive pupils in their classroom to a safe place

 As much as I am concerned when schools use ‘no-excuses’ and ‘zero-tolerance’ as statements on their website to outline their behaviour policy as macho selling points to parents,  I am also uneasy about much of the criticism these schools attract because it could be perceived to be seen as a complaint against any kind of strong behaviour policy at all. Do I as a teacher have Zero tolerance to racist, sexist, homophobic comments being made in class? Yes. Do I as a teacher have zero tolerance to persistent disruption to lessons? Yes

Some union members have been quite vocal in their support of a recent campaign to #Banthebooths. This in in relation to Isolation booths. It is often necessary for pupils to be removed from classrooms, because of disruptive behaviour. These pupils therefore need to go somewhere else, sometimes they can’t go to another classroom because there may not be a teacher there.  Usually pupils will go what is called an isolation room. It should a supervised Safe space. It is seen as sanction. If a pupil has been removed from the class, then it’s because of their impact on the learning of the other students. To be put in an isolation room it has to be relatively serious.

The word "Isolation" can be misleading.  I’d rather call it a "Removal room" or as one Catholic school called it, a "Damascus room".  I’d like to call it a place of conversion but to equate it as inhumane conjures up images of Andy Dufresne in solitary confinement in “Shawshank Redemption” which it certainly isn’t. It is ludicrous to suggest that having a pupil work in silence in reflecting on their behaviour should be seen as inhumane. Sitting quietly is not a punishment. A short sanction might be useful for the pupil.

We remove children from classrooms because we care about their well being and the well being of the other students who want to learn. We talk about the rights of the child. But what about all the other 29 children? What about the severe harm caused to the education of others if the pupil with persistent disruptive behaviour is not removed?

 What about the rights of teachers to teach their lesson? I teach a challenging Year 9 class and having the option of removal for some of those students who want to destroy the learning of others is a life saver. Feedback from pupil voice continually requests that the teachers deal with this disruptive behaviour so that that their learning not be disturbed

We talk about workload and getting to grips with behaviour can greatly reduce it. What about the misery of some of our members who suffer in disorderly schools where there is Chaos?  Some senior leadership teams have leaders who won’t tackle behaviour and increase teacher’s workloads by telling teachers to give detentions after school while some good senior leaders will run centralised detention systems that decrease a teacher’s workload. Decent teachers leave schools not because of bad behaviour per se, but by inept, bullying leaders who will talk about raising results and 4 levels of progress instead of recognising the elephant in the room.

Please don’t put me in a position next week, where I say to our members, we’ve decided as a union to ban the booths as they are inhumane because they will say “What is the alternative?” If it does not involve supporting teachers actually removing disruptive pupils from classrooms when their behaviour is out of control, then we will lose all creditability

Oppose the amendment