Every student gets nervous about starting their secondary education: the prospect of a new school, new teachers and new friends looms large over the summer holidays.
For children who struggle with literacy, the challenge ahead is even tougher. Of the roughly 570,000 students who will begin year 7 at a state secondary school in September 2017, approximately 165,000 will have been classed as not meeting the expected standard for reading in their SATs (DfE, 2017).
It is hard to overstate the difficulty of the task ahead for this group. In the 2016 GCSE cohort, just 11% of students who began year 7 without level 4 went on to achieve Cs in English and maths (DfE, 2017).
The consequences of low literacy will be felt across the curriculum too. A student who has not yet learned to read will be unable to learn, making it likely that they will fall behind in many subjects. Fewer than 1% of students who began year 7 without level 4 went to achieve the English Baccalaureate.
Given the magnitu
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