A peer-to-peer reading programme at Barry Island Primary School has proved a great success. Headteacher Ty Golding explains how they went about implementing the scheme and offers his advice to others wanting to do the same.

Improving pupils’ reading has long been a touchstone of education policy, in both England and Wales. 

At our school, Barry Island Primary in South Wales, the drive to improve reading levels permeates throughout the entire school. That’s because we know and understand that improving reading has benefits that extend across education. 

The main challenges we have faced have been engaging all children in reading and finding enough time for teachers to give individuals and small groups of children enough dedicated time.

We also had two specific year groups who were not scoring any higher order results in their national reading test scores. There were no high or low scores; every child was across the mid-range, which is inconsistent with the demographics you’d expect across a class. The data demonstrated that previous interventions were not developing those higher order skills – so, we decided to try something different.

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