As a former secondary English teacher, I spent the early years of my career accepting an unspoken norm: teaching reading was largely the job of the English department. My team taught comprehension, modelled reading strategies, developed vocabulary, and explored literary and non-fiction texts of increasing complexity. It felt natural and, in many ways, inevitable.
But the longer I taught, the more I realised how limiting that assumption was.
I still remember a Year 8 science lesson I observed. The class was working through a short but densely written text on photosynthesis. Within minutes, several pupils had disengaged. Some stared blankly at the page; others copied sentences without comprehension. When I later spoke to the science teacher, she sighed and said something I would hear often: “They just can’t read it.”
What struck me was that, in English, many of those same pupils could analyse a poem or tease out the implied meaning in a character’s dialogue. Yet this scientific explanation, compressed, technical, and concept-heavy, stopped them in their tracks. Their challenge wasn’t decoding. It was grappling with a discipline’s specialised language and way of thinking.
Many of the pupils who struggled most that day were the ones we consistently identified as disadvantaged: those for whom gaps in vocabulary, background knowledge, and confidence deepen quickly as texts grow more demanding. Data from schools across England reinforces this urgency: 83% of schools cite low literacy as a primary barrier to disadvantaged pupils’ progress, and only one in ten disadvantaged pupils who leave primary school below the expected reading standard later achieve both English and maths passes at GCSE. These inequalities are entrenched unless reading becomes a whole-school responsibility.
Students encounter complex academic texts in science, history, geography, mathematics, and beyond, each with its own structure, vocabulary, and conventions. If we continue to treat reading as “something English does,” we deny students, particularly those facing disadvantage, access to the full curriculum.
As students progress through secondary school, they encounter texts that demand far more than surface-level comprehension. A scientific journal extract may require conceptual sequencing; a historical source demands contextual inference; a mathematical problem requires precise interpretation of dense language.
These are not generic literacy skills. They are disciplinary skills, shaped by the conventions and forms of communication that define each subject. The EEF emphasises that reading in science is fundamentally different from reading in English or history. Every teacher is a teacher of reading because each discipline brings unique literacy demands.
When schools recognise this, the impact is particularly important for disadvantaged pupils:
• Students develop consistent strategies for approaching unfamiliar academic texts, helping to bridge vocabulary and comprehension gaps. • Subject-specific vocabulary is taught, reinforced, and revisited across lessons, reducing the disadvantage gap caused by uneven access to academic language outside school. • Teachers model how experts in their field read, demonstrating the cognitive processes that students may not have observed elsewhere.
Repeated scaffolding ensures disadvantaged pupils receive structured support, rather than relying on intermittent intervention.
What Recommendation 3 Looks Like in Practice
EEF Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools Recommendation 3
1. Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies Explicitly Reading comprehension strategies: activating prior knowledge, predicting, questioning, clarifying vocabulary, summarising, are among the most effective literacy approaches. For disadvantaged learners, explicit modelling of these strategies is particularly crucial: it gives them tools they may not have developed at home or in earlier schooling. Using metacognitive talk across subjects shows students how to approach complex texts systematically, rather than leaving them to struggle independently.
2. Select Texts Strategically Not all academic texts are equally suitable. For disadvantaged pupils, careful selection is particularly important to close knowledge and vocabulary gaps. Departments should audit and sequence texts to ensure they are:
• appropriately challenging without being inaccessible • conceptually rich and connected to prior learning • supported through targeted vocabulary instruction and scaffolding
This ensures all students, regardless of background, can engage meaningfully with the curriculum while being stretched.
3. Embed Reading in Every Subject When science teachers model interpreting a method section, geography teachers unpack a climate report, or maths teachers guide students through complex word problems, reading becomes integral. For disadvantaged learners, seeing these strategies applied in multiple contexts reinforces comprehension and reduces the risk that gaps in literacy will limit progress in any subject.
4. Scaffold and Gradually Release Responsibility The EEF highlights the value of a structured gradual-release model:
• Teacher modelling • Guided group reading • Paired or collaborative practice • Independent application
For disadvantaged students this ensures they are supported at each stage and have repeated opportunities to practise strategies before being expected to work independently.
Equity-Driven Actions and Takeaways
To help all students (especially those facing disadvantage) access complex academic texts, schools should prioritise:
• Reframe reading as a whole-school responsibility. Literacy is the foundation of learning in every discipline, not just English. • Use evidence-based reading strategies across subjects. Explicitly teaching comprehension processes benefits students who may have had limited exposure to these strategies elsewhere. • Audit and sequence texts carefully. Select texts that close knowledge and vocabulary gaps, as well as stretch students appropriately. • Pre-teach and reinforce vocabulary. Regular, cross-curricular exposure to academic and subject-specific language narrows disadvantage. • Provide structured scaffolds. Gradually releasing responsibility ensures that students build confidence and independence. • Invest in staff professional development. Equip all teachers, not just English specialists, to teach reading within their discipline, ensuring disadvantaged pupils have consistent support. • Monitor impact and adapt. Use assessment to track how disadvantaged learners engage with texts and adjust approaches to prevent gaps widening.
When schools commit to reading as a shared endeavour, the impact is profound. Disadvantaged students gain the comprehension skills, vocabulary, and confidence needed to fully access every subject.
