ABSTRACT
The data reported in this chapter were collected over a period of time in one secondary school setting. The school concerned is a long-established 11-16 LEA maintained school of 700 pupils, serving predominantly council housing in a city in the southwest of England. The cluster group to which the school belongs includes feeder primary and infant schools which were also centrally involved in the research. The nature of the cluster’s catchment area means that there is a large proportion of one-parent families and a high level of socio-economic deprivation. In the secondary school concerned, some 46 per cent of pupils receive free school meals. Standardized reading tests administered to all pupils in Years 7 and 8 indicated that only 13.7 per cent of pupils had reading quotients which were at or above the average for the age group. The school is regarded as being highly successful in fulfilling the potential of its students. In recent work with the NFER on ‘value-added’, the school had three out of ten departments in all schools in the same city which were identified as adding ‘more than expected’. As part of the school’s improvement strategy, enhancing literacy teaching had been identified as a high priority in the institution’s development plan.
