LIT Programme - Ashfield School

"Consistently, LIT has enthused struggling students, improved their confidence and has improved both their reading and writing"

About the school

Ashfield is a large secondary school with academy status located in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. By national standards, it is an extremely large school, catering to approximately 2,500 students ages 11-19. It was judged a ‘good school’ by Ofsted in October 2021.

Ashfield first purchased and implemented the LIT Programme in 2013 and has been using it ever since.

LIT Programme implementation

LIT sessions are timetabled as lessons in their own right, combating any possible difficulties associated with being withdrawn from lessons in order to attend intervention sessions. It is taught over a two-year period in Years 7 and 8, with 3 groups of 6-9 students.

Lessons are delivered by both teaching staff and HLTAs from within the school’s English and Inclusion departments, easing delivery across different classes and cohorts. 

A LIT Coordinator was appointed early on, internally, and this role was initially undertaken by Sam Henstock who is now the school’s Co KS3 Coordinator and who was instrumental in implementing and embedding good practice in the use of the programme’s pedagogy.

The role is now undertaken by Paul Beckett who is responsible for the day-to-day running and timetabling as well as tracking the progression of cohorts. He has produced and maintains a LIT handbook for the rest of the team to reference and, along with shared digital monitoring of progress, half-termly meetings occur with all staff members to share learning and best practice to the wider faculty. The school is now also implementing the reciprocal teaching techniques across the school.

There has also been emphasis on getting the parents more involved in the programme and in the reading process itself. Evenings of Literacy events are calendared frequently with parents invited to attend. Homework, complementing the LIT programme, is set to establish reading time beyond school hours and end-of-year reports are sent to parents, explaining their child’s progress over the academic year. All of this has been extremely well received.

Impact of the LIT Programme

The school has consistently seen progress in reading ages of between 3 and 5 years.

Significant data collection was hindered following the closure of schools in relation to the pandemic in 2020; however, the school saw significant and extremely encouraging improvement among their cohorts. Year 7s saw 11 months of improvement to their average reading age in just 4-5 months from just September to January.

There was particularly pleasing progress for boys, who had started with lower average reading ages than girls, with an increase of 14 months during that same time period. Additionally, whilst there may be other factors, it is interesting to note that at an interim point in the year, pupil premium students outperformed their peers. 

It is important to recognise that although pleasing averages were seen for the entire cohorts, there were some particularly notable success stories for individuals which were celebrated internally.

What the LIT teachers think

Paul Beckett, LIT Coordinator:

"The programme is very effective. It builds resilience in each student by giving them appliable tools that they can use across the curriculum."

Sam Henstock, Co KS3 Coordinator:

“While the levels of attainment are excellent, I think other benefits are equally as important. Numbers aside, the visible improvements in students’ overall confidence and feelings towards reading are extremely rewarding, especially as such positivity continues into Year 8 and beyond.”