Research School Network: Building a Reading Culture: Starting with Why? A new series on building a reading culture by Louise Gregson

Reading Mastery is a daily reading session where staff read aloud to students. It is a vehicle to build a reading culture whilst tackling the disadvantage associated with low literacy levels. More than just an initiative for us, it is a moral imperative that allows our students to have a ​‘seat at the table’. We all understand the impact reading has on progress, but reading can also promote joy, inclusivity and curiosity to light a spark within our students.

At Dixons Croxteth, Reading Mastery is the result of a carefully sequenced implementation journey, grounded in the EEF’s Implementation Guidance, and shaped by the realities of a diverse secondary school community in one of the most disadvantaged areas in the North West. Our focus is on doing fewer things well, embedding reading as a daily entitlement for every student, and ensuring that practice is sustained long after the initial launch – an initiative that lasts past half term.

So I won’t begin this series of blogs by discussing what we did. 

I need to start with why we did it.

The Problem

The EEF is clear that effective implementation begins with accurately diagnosing the problem, before jumping to solutions. We have all experienced the paper-over-the-cracks initiatives that are decided on a Monday and implemented by Friday. And those initiatives never last. Implementation that is built to last grows from in the issue itself – diagnosing this issue correctly takes time. Knowing and understanding the problem means the solution will fit.

Before we could design anything meaningful, we first had to be honest about what the real problem actually was. On paper, the barriers looked technical: decoding, fluency, vocabulary, background knowledge. But these were symptoms, not the cause. The deeper issue sat beneath all of that.

The real problem – symptom but not the cause

There was no joy in reading when we began the project. Students did not talk about books. Ever. As a passionate English teacher and avid reader, I found this both concerning and telling. The joy of reading, that spark that makes children want to pick up a book in the first place, was simply missing. 

This was only a symptom. Our internal data painted a clearer picture: a high proportion of students entered Dixons Croxteth with reading ages significantly below their chronological age. Weak decoding created barriers for some; limited access to texts across the curriculum created barriers for others. For many, restricted vocabulary and background knowledge capped comprehension. And most students were reluctant readers born from a combination of ability, confidence, and habit.

But if we had stopped there, we risked designing a solution that tackled the wrong issue. Implementation needed to be rooted in the evidence and in the lived reality of our classrooms. If not, we would only recreate the same problems and meet the same issues further down the line and this is something the EEF warns against repeatedly.

The evidence base was unequivocal:
1. Reading comprehension is heavily dependent on vocabulary knowledge.
2. Reading aloud supports language development, fluency, and listening comprehension across all ages.
3. High-quality modelling from the teacher accelerates confidence and independence.

In other words: to change the outcomes, we had to change the experience. If we wanted students to read more, read better, and enjoy reading, then joy itself had to be designed deliberately back into the offer.

Why Mastery?

Mastery – getting better at something that matters – sits at the heart of what we do at Dixons and is one of three key drivers in all our academies: students mastering a lifechanging skill such as reading ensured that our reading offer was aligned with the wider trust principles. While Drop Everything and Read may be the product of a good reading culture, it doesn’t create one; we were building a positive reading culture from the ground up, so our approach needed to be deliberately different: intentional, structured, and ready to withstand any early turbulence. This is where mastery comes in; students needed purposeful reading experiences to develop fluency and the journey of mastery is ongoing. Much like a reader’s journey, it is never complete. It is not a sprint, not a single destination but a sequence of stops, each stop carrying a new experience forward.

And so, this led to a clear decision: we needed a brand-new whole-school reading entitlement, alongside our targeted, evidence-informed intervention ​‘Fresh Start’. Our theory of change was simple:

If every student experiences daily, high-quality reading that is expertly modelled, tightly structured, and emotionally engaging, then over time they will not only read more and read better, but they will come to see reading as a source of joy, identity and possibility.

Our universal offer had to do more than raise reading ages; it had to bring reading back to joy. Ritual, routine and rigour would build competence; carefully chosen texts and shared reading experiences would build connection and empathy. When students feel successful and feel something, culture shifts. That was (and will always remain) the moral imperative underpinning Reading Mastery at Dixons Croxteth.

In my next blog, I will explore what we did, sharing with you the active ingredients of Reading Mastery and what this looks like in our classrooms.