A survey was conducted with the aim of identifying attitudes towards reading amongst upper primary pupils, and establishing whether these attitudes had changed over the five-year period from 1998 to 2003. A sample of 5076 pupils in Years 4 and 6 completed questionnaires. Attitudes were generally positive, but declined somewhat between the younger and older of these age groups. A sub-sample of 2364 of these pupils were in the same schools where the same questionnaire had been completed in 1998. Enjoyment of reading had significantly fallen over the five years, whilst confidence as readers had significantly increased over the same period. The changes may be related to the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy, but other explanations are also possible.In the five years from 1998 to 2003, the literacy learning of primary pupils in England was largely determined by the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). This was a major government initiative, with considerable investment of both material and human resources. A framework for teaching was introduced (DfEE, 1998), with text choices and teaching objectives for each term's work, structured as a daily literacy hour. This journal reported a number of perspectives on this initiative in Volume 23, Number 3. Both the national test results over these five years and England's high performance in the 2001 PIRLS international study (Twist et al., 2003) suggest some success in achieving the aim of higher literacy standards in primary schools. However, less attention has been given to the pupils' perceptions of literacy over this period. This paper reports on a survey of pupils' attitudes towards reading that allows comparisons between 1998 and 2003.In most recent research, attitude to reading is seen as one part of a broader construct, motivation to read. In their review and synthesis of recent research, Guthrie and Wigfield (2000) distinguish five aspects of motivation. The first is learning orientation, or a dedication to understanding the content of what is read. Then, intrinsic motivation is defined as the enjoyment of reading and the disposition to seek out reading activities. This can be based on a number of different feelings, including curiosity, involvement and challenge. Third, there is extrinsic motivation -rewards -although this can lead to surface strategies that may not be sustained once the reward has been gained. Fourth, they identify self-efficacy, which is described as a confidence in one's own capacity as a reader. Lastly, social motivation -sharing books -is distinguished.McKenna, Kear and Ellsworth (1995) are directly interested in attitude to reading, rather than motivation taken more broadly. They regard attitude as the continuum of
The SFVS promoted an increase in fruit intake after three months. At seven months the effect remained significant but reduced, and it returned to baseline in year 2 when pupils were no longer part of the scheme. There was a small impact on the intake of some nutrients across the children surveyed.
The aim of this study using a quasi-experimental design was to investigate whether utilising synthetic phonics in schools catering for low-income families in India would increase reading and spelling attainment in English. Over 500 children in 20 schools took part in the 6-month programme. Just over half of the children experienced lessons organised around the synthetic phonics materials, whilst the other children continued with their normal English lessons. The findings show that there were statistically significant differences between the intervention and control groups in the improvements of the children in their test scores in reading and spelling.
The results of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2001 (PIRLS) were reported in 2003. In addition to data about the reading achievements of 10-year-olds in 35 countries, the study also collected questionnaire information from children, their teachers, headteachers and parents. One aspect of the data that attracted comment in the media was the fact that, despite high achievement on the reading tests, children in England were reported as having relatively poor attitudes to reading, compared to children in many other countries. A review of the results of selected surveys over the past 30 years suggests that there may be some evidence of attitudes to reading in primary schools becoming less positive. Preliminary analysis of the attitude and achievement data from PIRLS suggests a more complex picture than that presented in the summary index published in 2003.When the results of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) were published in (Mullis et al., 2003, the media identified two key findings of the study: that 10-year-olds in England had performed well in relation to their peers in most of the other 34 participating countries and that the attitudes to reading held by children in England (and also in Scotland) tended to be poorer than those in most other countries.'Better but bored: The teachers, children and policy-makers of England have done well to raise 10-year-olds' reading achievement . . . But we still have an attitude problem. ' (Ward, 2003) '10-year-olds ''are best and worst'' at reading: England's 10-year-olds are among the top and bottom in the world at reading, an international study reported . . . Despite their high average score, 10-year-olds in England had a poorer attitude towards reading, and read less often for fun, than pupils in other countries.' (Clare, 2003) Concern about children's attitudes to reading in the light of the PIRLS results needs to be put into context: are children in England expressing more negative attitudes to reading than they have in the past or do the PIRLS results reflect long-standing attitudes in this country?In the past, work on children's reading that has not been focused on reading development or competence has tended to divide into two main approaches -
An evaluation of the National Healthy School Standard (NHSS) was undertaken by the authors on behalf of the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills. One part of the evaluation involved gaining access to a number of datasets derived from previous research and analysing the health-related outcomes of schools which had attained Level 3 of the NHSS, compared with those of other schools. The sources which provided the most interesting findings were the Health-Related Behaviour Questionnaire (HRBQ) survey and the Ofsted database of school inspection ratings. This paper describes the statistical methods used, and the results of the HRBQ and Ofsted analyses. Using HRBQ data, many pupil-level outcomes were explored, but relatively few indicated significant differences and even those tended to be quite small. The Ofsted school-level data yielded stronger evidence of NHSS impact. The paper concludes by suggesting possible reasons for these findings.
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