Benefit of one-to-one tuition for struggling pupils lasts years

8-1-2010

Benefit of one-to-one tuition for struggling pupils lasts years

Six-year-olds struggling at school who are given 40 hours of personal tuition in reading and writing outstrip their classmates years later, a university study shows.

The first long-term research into the Every Child a Reader project found lasting benefits from one-to-one tuition for children at the bottom of their class.

Young children who had fallen behind in their schoolwork — some by as much as two years — were taken out of class for half an hour daily. They had four months of lessons with specially trained teachers. Three years after the programme ended, they outperformed their classmates and children from similar schools who had not benefited from the same attention.

Researchers at the Institute of Education, University of London, analysed the impact of the £10 million programme on the children who were lowest achieving at the end of Year 1 (aged six), at ten schools.
The children who had one-to-one “reading recovery” lessons are reading and writing significantly better than similar children. Yet in maths, in which they had no help, they are experiencing the same difficulties as other similar children.

The 73 children who had tuition are on track to reach the expected level by the end of primary school. On average, they were ahead of their peers by about half a level in reading and a third of a level in writing, by the end of Year 4.

The classmates of children who had special lessons did better than pupils at other schools, where the programme did not run. This suggested that there may be a “wash-over effect” from the scheme, researchers said.

The report said: “The children in this study tended to be economically disadvantaged, with just over half taking free school meals, and to have English as an additional language.”

The majority were effectively illiterate at the start, with half not scoring at all on the standard word-reading test and four fifths either not reading or able to read only the most basic level books.

But they made momentous progress with a few months of intensive tuition, and maintained their lead over other pupils.

Children whose schools did not use reading recovery were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with special needs by the end of Year 3.

Jean Gross, former director of the Every Child a Chance Trust, and now England’s first Communication Champion for Children, said: “It is fantastic to see the long-term positive effect of reading recovery. These are very vulnerable children.” (Times)