The contribution of academically effective primary schools to the educational progress of children with Specific Word Reading Difficulties.

Significant differences in educational progress can be experienced by children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) when compared to their peers and this group includes children who start school demonstrating Specific Word Reading Difficulties (SWRD). SWRD can be defined as difficulties with reading that are not in keeping with wider cognitive skills (e.g. Russell, Ryder, Norwich & Ford, 2015). We know little about whether attending a more academically effective school can boost the educational progress of children with SEN (including children with SWRD; e.g. Rutter & Maughan, 2002) and this contrasts sharply with the much richer evidence demonstrating such boosts for other groups of children (e.g. those from socioeconomically disadvantaged households; Sammons et al., 2013). Addressing this disparity has also been repeatedly highlighted by systematic literature reviews (e.g. Sammons, 1999; Rutter & Maughan, 2002; Creemers, Kyriakides & Sammons, 2014). The publically available dataset from the longitudinal Effective Preschool, Primary, and Secondary Education (EPPSE) Project (~3000 children and families) provides a feely accessible resource that is well suited to this topic given its past use investigating the impacts of attending more academically effectiveness primary schools and the ability to identify children with SWRD via researcher-administered tests of child cognition at entry to Reception (Sylva et al., 2010).
1. How do children who start school with Specific Word Reading Difficulties (SWRD) differ in their educational progress during primary school compared to their peers? How does this progress vary across different school subjects?
2. Can attending a more academically effective primary school boost the educational progress of children who start school with SWRD? Can such boosts help them catch up with their peers by the end of Year 6?
3. What areas of academic effectiveness are most and least associated with boosts (catch-up or otherwise) to educational progress and in what areas are catch-up boosts more and less apparent?