February 11, 2016
It was recently announced that the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) will be launching a full effectiveness trial of Accelerated Reader in 200 schools, involving 18,000 pupils in the project. This will be carried out as part of a £4m scheme, comprising of 6 different projects, involving 920 schools and over 48,000 students. The programme will be implemented with all children in years 4 and 5, with impact data collected at the end of year 4 and all children tracked until their SATs at the end of KS2.
The announcement follows an earlier trial of the effectiveness of Accelerated Reader conducted by the EEF in 2015, which found the programme to be ‘low cost and effective’ for schools. This trial found that students using AR achieved an average reading age growth of 3 additional months, whilst those who receive Free School Meals achieved an average of 5 months’ additional reading age growth over the 22 week trial period. This report can be read in full here.
Meanwhile, primary schools in the northeast will also be encouraged to take part in the trial as part of the EEF’s 5 year North East Primary Literacy Campaign, a £10m campaign to improve literacy levels amongst disadvantaged primary school children in the northeast. The campaign is aiming to reach all 880 primary schools in the region, with the intent of shrinking the achievement gap between children from low-income homes and their classmates.