Help for pupils struggling with reading

Children in Hull who struggle at reading are to be given intensive one-to-one tuition as part of a multi-million pound Government scheme.

Read Recovery is an intensive catch-up programme that focuses on the bottom five per cent of pupils at key stage one and will give six-year-olds specialist support from trained teachers.

The groundbreaking scheme aims to raise standards for those children who are failing to make the grade in national tests.

Last year, just 74 per cent of pupils in Hull gained the Government benchmark in English when they reached 11-years-old.

Eleven schools who have the highest number of struggling youngsters have been selected for the new scheme.

Support for each pupil costs more than £2,000 and is part of the Government's Every Child a Reader programme.

Ken Sainty, Hull City Council's head of service for primary schools, said: "Read Recovery targets the six-year-olds who have the most difficulty in reading. Each teacher trained will target eight children to get additional intensive reading support.

"Research over the past 20 years shows that children do catch up to their peers and not only do they catch up but sustain it and by the time they are 11 they are good readers."

In Hull, the grant will be worth about £500,000 over four years, with £100,000 for the first year.

Read Recovery teachers will work with up to eight children every day to enable the "hardest-to-teach" children to become successful readers and writers.

Jackie Spowage is leading the Read Recovery scheme.

She is responsible for training a teacher from each of the schools in a training classroom at Longhill Primary School.

She said: "The success rate of this is brilliant. It is one-to-one intensive and personally tailored to meet the needs of the individual child."