High expectations, high support

Well hello there, and welcome to update #192!

A case study from Lingfield Primary School

At Lingfield Primary School, 40% of pupils are considered vulnerable in some respect including those with pupil premium, special educational needs, and adverse childhood experiences.

And yet pupil premium pupils are now outperforming their non-pupil premium peers in reading.

This isn’t an accident, it’s the result of deliberate, sustained work over many years.

The numbers

Over the last four years, the school has achieved over 92% in the phonics screening check. This year, 97% are on track.

Of the children receiving before and after school reading support, 96% have made accelerated progress.

The school also achieved 45% greater depth in Year 6 reading.

These are significant outcomes for any school. For a school serving a community with high levels of vulnerability, they’re remarkable.

The challenge

Charlotte Bunyan, Assistant Head and reading lead, has worked at Lingfield for 12 years. She recognised early on that while many parents want to support their children’s reading, they don’t always know what effective reading at home looks like.

Some parents lack confidence with phonics. Some face practical barriers around time and routines. Some families need additional support because of English as an additional language, work patterns, or other circumstances.

The school’s response has been to combine high expectations with high support: making regular reading an expectation, while helping families find practical, realistic ways to make it happen.

Starting early

The reading culture begins in nursery and preschool. Children take home “discovery bags” containing a high-quality text and related resources—puzzles, puppets, small-world figures, fine motor activities. Each bag includes guidance for parents, giving them ideas for how to use the text and resources with their child.

As children become ready for phonics, they receive carefully matched books linked to the school’s phonics scheme, alongside reading for pleasure books. This means children are supported with decoding and fluency while still having access to rich language, vocabulary and enjoyable stories.

From the very beginning, the message is clear: reading matters, and we’ll help you make it work.

Making expectations explicit

Reading is made visible across the school’s work with families: during parent tours, welcome meetings, workshops and ongoing conversations.

Parents are expected to return books, look after them and enjoy them with their children, but this is framed positively and with support. The school encourages families to read regularly, ideally every day and at least five times a week where possible.

Staff work with parents to find flexible routines: reading in the morning, during swimming lessons, at other points in the week. The expectation is clear, but the approach is realistic.

Demystifying reading

A key part of the approach is helping parents understand what reading with a child can actually look like.

Through workshops and showcases, parents are shown practical strategies. Staff model phonics, explain terminology and provide guidance so that parents feel confident rather than overwhelmed.

Where parents haven’t attended a workshop, teachers follow up individually, offering short catch-up conversations. This keeps the tone supportive rather than judgmental.

The school has also built routines that make reading feel valued and enjoyable:

• Reading showcases showing progression from preschool to Year 6

• Mystery readers, where family members surprise children by reading in class

• Parent reading moments at the end of the day

• Reading spines linked to curriculum topics

• A book vending machine where children can win books for their class library

• Class readers and regular exposure to demanding, high-quality texts

These routines create a culture in which children want to read, talk about books and share stories.

Additional support for families who need it

For families who find home reading difficult, Lingfield has developed before and after school reading support.

Teachers, teaching assistants and other adults give short, regular reading slots to pairs of children, usually around ten minutes, at least three times a week.

This support is particularly valuable for families facing additional barriers: families with English as an additional language, working parents, and children from vulnerable groups.

It’s a small intervention, but repeated consistently, it compounds.

What made the difference

The strength of the approach lies in its consistency. Reading is not treated as a one-off initiative, but as a set of small, deliberate actions repeated over time.

The school has built relationships with families, made expectations explicit, removed barriers, provided practical modelling and kept the joy of reading at the centre.

As Charlotte put it: the most important thing is to build relationships with parents and help them understand both what the school is trying to achieve and the difference they can make.

This is what equity looks like

Not simplifying the curriculum. Not lowering the bar.

But removing barriers while keeping expectations high. Building relationships with families. Making the expectation clear and then helping them meet it.

High challenge, high support, from the very start.

Ten to fifteen minutes of reading, repeated consistently, can be transformational.

What would change if more schools combined high expectations with high support from nursery onwards?

Until next time,

Mary

PS A training day for primary colleagues on The Teachers’ Collection

If you are a primary leader thinking about INSET in the new academic year, we are running a day’s online session on reading across the curriculum and there are more details here.