Early intervention to prevent long-term literacy difficulties: the case of Catch Up Literacy

Problem: Recent research indicates that about 17% of school leavers have significant literacy problems, a proportion that has not changed significantly in the last 20 years. Literacy problems are associated with increased risk of poverty, unemployment, criminal conviction, and ill-health. Most adults with literacy problems had difficulties in reading from the early stages of schooling onwards. Purpose of study: The purpose of the study was the evaluation of an intervention for children with reading difficulties. Catch Up Literacy is a structured one-to-one literacy intervention for learners from 6 to 13 who are struggling to learn to read. It involves all aspects of the reading process: word recognition processes and text comprehension processes. It is targeted to the needs of individual learners, identified through a bank of formative assessments, and involves two individual 15-minute sessions per week. Methods and Results: (1) Data was obtained for 3134 learners, in 27 local authorities, who received Catch Up Literacy support, and who were tested with the Salford Sentence Reading Test at the beginning and end of the intervention. Mean Chronological Age at the start of intervention was 86.51 months and mean Reading Age was 64.23. The mean gain in Reading Age after 7.33 months was 18.5 months (ratio gain 2.74). An independent t-test analysis showed that the learners had increased their Reading Age far more than expected by the passage of time alone. A follow-up study of 185 children ten years after intervention indicated that they had maintained their gains. (2) A more controlled study was carried out with 87 pupils in Years 7 and 8 in six secondary schools in Nottingham, with a total of 87 participants (aged 12 and 13). Over 4.01 months, a 'treatment' group (n=20) were given Catch Up Literacy support while a 'control' group (n = 67) received 'matched-time support' (additional literacy support of the teacher's choice, but not Catch Up Literacy, for approximately the same amount of time). The learners receiving Catch Up support started with a mean Reading Age of 85.7 months, and made a mean gain of 13.10 months (ratio gain 3.27). The matched-time controls started with a mean Reading Age of 88.92 months, and made a mean gain of 5.57 months (ratio gain 1.39). An independent t-test analysis of Reading Age ratio gains showed that the learners receiving Catch Up support achieved higher ratio gains than the matched-time controls. Conclusions and recommendations: There is clear evidence for the effectiveness of Catch Up Literacy and, more generally, for the view that early intervention with children with literacy difficulties may lead to significant lasting improvement, which may help to reduce the incidence of literacy difficulties in later life. Further research is needed to compare it to other interventions and to investigate factors that may influence the level of effectiveness, such as SES, initial chronological age, and initial Reading Age. There should also be more extensive and longer-term follow-up into adult life. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu