Reading is a human right

We all deserve to be able to read easily. Better readers are likely to stay in education for longer, get paid more, be healthier and live longer. They're also less likely to end up in prison or suffer from mental health problems. And that doesn't even take into account the brilliant world of escape, knowledge and interest that reading offers us all.

Yet an estimated 1 in 10 of us are dyslexic and so struggle to master even basic reading skills. Worse, many schools do not pick up on these struggles early enough, nor put in place the support that will allow dyslexic students to learn. Partly that's a knowledge gap; in the UK, understanding dyslexia and methods of remediating it are not mandatory in teacher training. In the US, arguments over the best method to teach reading mean that in many states, it is still not accepted (despite all the evidence) that phonics based teaching is an essential tool to teach neuro-divergent students to read. More crucially in both systems, it's a resource gap; schools in the UK and the US have been struggling for years with lack of funding and when purses are tight, it's often the SEN departments that are cut first and hardest.

UK schools have tried to bridge the reading gap by introducing "phonics first' into all primary classrooms. It was a valiant effort, but its results have been mixed, especially for the dyslexic pupils. We think that's because the programme was designed for all students in general, but not neuro-diverse students in particular. In other words, while teaching phonics is the best way to teach a dyslexic student to overcome their difficulties - as their difficulties are firstly with 'decoding' or knowing and being able to 'decode' the letter patterns within words - there is a vast difference between one phonics programme and another. The programmes introduced into English schools hurtle through all the sounds at breakneck speed. This leaves the dyslexic students often bewildered and confused. I have taught many year 7's who were not given the time they needed to master phonics at a pace that suited them in their primary school. They end up in secondary school with basic and fundamental gaps in their knowledge and understanding that leads to frustration and a sense of hopelessness. Typically they end up in the bottom sets across the subjects because of these lack of skills, regardless of their knowledge of or aptitude for other subjects. My colleagues and I have often spent the first year of secondary school attempting to undo a sense that 'English is impossible' before we can even begin to start to teach the skills these students need to thrive in school.

It's why I eventually left my teaching post in a school to write a programme of phonics that was aimed at those students who have tumbled through primary and ended up with poor knowledge, few skills and no self esteem when it comes to reading and writing. I use the same techniques that other phonics programmes use, except I focus primarily on teaching students how to spell the 44 sounds in our language. If you can spell it, you can read it, and by learning how to do the 'harder' task, we find that our students automatically improve on the 'easier' aspect that is reading. Our students, without even practising reading, find that after a few months of learning spelling with us, will read faster, more accurately, with more expression.

We take our students through the programme at a speed that suits them; we all learn at different paces and we all struggle with different areas and find others easy. We don't give up on our students until they can read confidently, fluently and with ease. There's no arbitrary end point - no 'we've given you an intervention so that is all you're getting' here. We also teach them the kinds of words they will actually need in secondary school, university or work. Most phonics programmes are aimed at primary school age students and so the words they cover are generally pretty simple. We don't stop with simple words; we make sure that students are able to read the words they will encounter in their English, science and geography lessons - not just a curated set of books that are aimed 'at their level'. In other words - we bring their level up to where it needs to be, we don't talk or read down to them.

We'd like all schools to commit to teaching their students to read so that all students leaving school will have equal access to opportunities in the wider world beyond. We think that interventions should not be time limited, but should be in place as long as the student needs. We think all students CAN learn to read and write better and schools should refusing to give up until all their students DO read and write better. Our experience shows that it is possible. All it needs is the political will.

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