Language/Reading Curriculum in the Fourth Grade

The Year 5 students participating in PIRLS in England were assessed in May and June 2016. As such, they were only partially taught under the curriculum that was introduced in 2014. Overall, the new curriculum outlines less specific content, focuses more on essential subject knowledge and skills, and gives teachers more freedom to decide how to teach. However, the new curriculum contains detailed provisions for the teaching of English in primary schools. Specifically, stronger emphasis has been placed on phonic knowledge, vocabulary development, grammar, punctuation and spelling, handwriting, and spoken English. Another important aspect of the new curriculum is its encouragement of reading for pleasure.

Generally, approaches to assert the implementation of national curriculum content and educational policies are relatively soft in the English education system, and schools are given freedom as to how they achieve the goals and standards outlined in the curriculum. However, the Department for Education offers a number of accountability measures and drivers aimed to support curriculum implementation and continued school improvement, particularly for schools that do not meet expected standards.⁶ These include inspection and regulation of schools and other services that care for children by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services, and Skills.

Reading Policy

Reading policy is integrated in the English program of study, which is part of the national curriculum and sets general requirements for teachers and teaching. The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to ensure that all students are able to:⁷

Read easily, fluently and with good understanding
Develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing, and spoken language
Appreciate Englandʼs rich and varied literary heritage
Write clearly, accurately, and coherently, adapting language and style for a range of contexts, purposes, and audiences
Use discussion in order to learn; elaborate and explain clearly understanding and ideas
Be competent in the art of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others, and participating in debate

In addition to these objectives, the new English curriculum places a strong emphasis on phonic knowledge, decoding, grammar, and reading for pleasure.

A new primary school accountability system was introduced in 2016. This included new floor standards, expected standards, and progress measures and means.⁸ Comparisons with standards set in previous years are therefore not possible, but the latest figures for 2016 show that at the end of Key Stage 2, 66 percent achieved the new standard in reading; 72 percent achieved it in grammar, punctuation, and spelling; and 74 percent achieved the new standard in writing.⁹

In recent years, the government has introduced a series of measures to raise the standards of literacy in schools and reduce the attainment gap between disadvantaged students and their peers.¹⁰ These initiatives include:¹¹

Early years student premium funding to support disadvantaged children ages 3 and 4 in early years settings
Additional financial resources to help schools support students who do not meet the expected reading standards when they move up to secondary school
Phonic partnership grants, which encourage schools with proven expertise in teaching early reading through systematic synthetic phonics to help improve the quality of phonics instruction in less successful schools
Designating experienced middle and senior leaders as specialist leaders of education, whose role it is to develop other leaders in a specialist area such as phonics

Moreover, a statutory phonics screening check for students at the end of Year 1 was introduced in 2012 to help schools identify students in need of extra support, and to encourage teachers to use phonics to teach the essential early skills that pupils need for reading and writing.¹²

Summary of National Curriculum

The national curriculum for reading for Year 5 students is set out in the English programs of study for Key Stages 1 and 2.¹³ Schools are required to have taught the relevant program of study by the end of each key stage. While schools have the flexibility to introduce content earlier or later than set out in the programs of study, by the end of each key stage, students are expected to know, apply, and understand the matters, skills, and processes specified in the relevant programs by the end of each key stage. Exhibit 2 summarizes the knowledge and skills in reading that students are expected to attain by the end of Key Stages 1 and 2.

Exhibit 2: Summary of National Curriculum for Reading in Primary School Years

Dimension	Key Stage 1 (Years 1 to 2)	Key Stage 2 (Years 3 to 6)
Word Reading	Apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words until automatic decoding has become embedded and reading is fluent Respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes Read accurately by blending sounds in words of two or more syllables with familiar and unfamiliar Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence (GPC) Read words with contractions and understand that the apostrophe represents the omitted letter(s) Read words containing common suffixes Read most words quickly and accurately, without overt sounding and blending, when they have been frequently encountered Read aloud books closely matched to their improving phonic knowledge, sounding out unfamiliar words accurately, automatically and without undue hesitation Reread these books to build up fluency and confidence in word reading	Read further exception words, noting the unusual correspondences between spelling and sound, and where these occur in the word Apply growing knowledge of root words, prefixes, and suffixes (morphology and etymology), both to read aloud and to understand the meaning of new words
Reading Comprehension	Develop pleasure in reading, motivation to read, vocabulary, and understanding Understand both the books that they can already read accurately and fluently and those that they listen to Participate in discussions about books, poems, and other works that are read to them and those that they can read for themselves	Develop and maintain positive attitudes to reading and understanding of what they read Be able to discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, considering the impact on the reader Distinguish between statements of fact and opinion Retrieve, record, and present information from nonfiction Participate in discussions about books that are read to them and those they can read for themselves, building on their own and others’ ideas and challenging views courteously Explain and discuss their understanding of what they have read, including through formal presentations and debates