To be fed up with primary teachers holding readers back due to ‘comprehension’?

The assessment process is crazy. My DS is 5 and can read fluently but is technically non verbal because he doesn’t effectively use communicative language yet. Because he won’t always read the phonics sheets reliably, the school can’t give him reading books so he’s unable to progress in that sense and is still being given phonics sheets with monosyllabic words.

I feel as though he’s being patronised tbh, he reads a full book to me every night with no issues. Not sure how he’d ever fare in a comprehension test because he won’t reliably answer questions.

Is this discrimination? If you felt that way and started using that language might things change?

I totally disagree. I could read before I went to school - taught myself because I was too impatient to wait for mum to have time. I ways read at years above my schooling level. I was lucky that we had a library at school and my parents always gave books as presents.

English teachers totally ruin good books IMO with their digging into and analysing every minute thing. I hated english as they sucked the joy out of it.

That said, after working for 30+ years, this year was the first where I actually had to respond to a document and tell the professional services firm that wrote it that Expert is not a verb. I have never had to use the term adjective, verb etc in feedback before, but my head was close to exploding after reading 50 pages that had multiple uses of expert as a verb. Initially I was correcting the wording but after around 5 pages I just highlighted the word and put the comment expert is not a verb.

ETA I'll expand on why I disagree. If you enjoy reading it is because you understand what you are reading. Who would read just to look at random words on a page, which don't create a mental image and connection with what is written. That's why people prefer genres. I'm not a fan of autobiographies, others aren't fans of fantasy novels or romance novels. You read stories you enjoy. IMO non readers are like that due to poor comprehension skills. They get nothing out of reading. Avid readers love a well written book and you would find that they all see the book slightly differently.

OPs child sounds like they are being penalised due to their speech issues, which will ultimately kill their love of reading if OP does not find other reading material for them.

I don't like the idea of a child with a speech delay being penalised for being unable to vocalise. This is how angry young men are created. Could you possibly have a chat with SENCO about how they intend to help him progress instead of staying on the same level as whatever they are doing, its not working and if he hasn't done SATs they will start piling on the pressure at yr2 or yr6 when they suddenly realise he is not quite where he should be.

I'd ignore the reading scheme completely and teach him yourself using methods tailored to your child and not what a computer has decided. There's lots of lovely books out there that you can start reading together. You read and gently help him to learn how to understand what is happening. Also, if it's Biff Chip and bloody Kipper, you have my sympathies. I did rather enjoy William and Hamid though.

I would be interested to know what they do in private schools and how different it is.

It does seem that the teachers are quite happy when parents say that they don’t think the approach is working for their child, and they choose instead to read their own books at home instead. There is no one best method for all children.

For my son as soon as I took the school pressure off and said we aren’t reading those books anymore at home his confidence grew, he reads books every night now. And enjoys it.

It’s probably not as simple as a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way. In state schools it’s what works best to get results for the most children with the available time and resources. But often that’s not what’s best for your child.

Yes and no, of course yes not everyone will understand everything. Similarly to you I have a degree in Social Science and a MA in Disability Studies and my understanding of advance physics would be about the same as yours whether I read it or someone read it to me. However, over my years as a TA with 16-18s and 18 to 30,40,50..., I could give many examples of students who could read something and not get it, but have it read to them and get it.

In my original example, yes of course there are people who wouldn't get the work place structure document whether it was read to them or they read it, but there are also people who wouldn't get it reading it themselves, but would get it being read to them. It IS two skills, but in the real world you need BOTH skills in order to gain information from texts, which is normally the point of reading (whether you are gaining that information for pleasure as in making sense of a novel, or to gain knowledge).

In OPs original post she was arguing her son shouldn't be given easy reading books just because he can't explain what he is reading, but later in life he will probably NEED to be able to read TO understand what he is reading!

Even if he is an excellent decoder for his age, if he goes through his school years being able to decode but not gain meaning, then the minute he needs to understand a text to use in coursework or understand the instructions on homework task, he will struggle to complete the task he is doing just as much as if he couldn't read the instructions. At work, if he can read instructions for machinery or how to give a medication safely, but not understand what they mean unless someone explains them orally, he will not be able to complete these tasks appropriately and safely without help any better than if he'd needed someone to read the instructions to him!

The school are absolutely right. Children can often decode the words but don't fully understand what they've read. This lack of comprehension is problematic for all subjects including maths, sciences, social sciences as well as daily non school life. It's good to hear about a teacher who actually knows what they're doing and doesn't give into parents who don't know what they're doing and think mechanical reading will suffice.

I hate the way that any difficulty with speech or hearing is taken as being evidence of inability to understand something - but always being able to speak is shorthand for 'knows their stuff'. After all, most of us have encountered people who seem to have failed upwards in the workplace - the reason they have got to those positions must have been because they always have a smooth answer for everything; they certainly don't have the knowledge or expertise they've been credited with (in my experience at any rate).

It must be just as frustrating for people who aren't skilled at writing to have their abilities doubted, though.

My daughter was upset because her bright child was being held back from moving up until everyone was ready. He was bored out of his skull. At home he was a great reader. Picked books at the library, charity shop, second hand book shop.

She negotiated with the headteacher that he could bring his own book in during reading sessions.

You need to be on the ball, it's the same with math.

Go above the teacher and talk to the SENCO. I’m a primary school teacher and have colleagues who stick to the bands far too rigorously, however in my setting the TA’s coordinate this. Find out the types of books he enjoys and buy a set, advise that you read these with him at home.

In that case, I do think the teacher is holding him back for the sake of holding him back which is ridiculous. There is a huge difference between rushing through reading levels and staying on the same level for a year. I might have missed it but what year is he in? I just wondered if he’d done SATs yet as the reading papers would have given you an idea of his compression levels.

The books we use at school have targeted comprehension questions in the back but I do sometimes add in extra ones as well. However I know the children incredibly well and in the case of your DS I would either ask him a separate question and ensure he had plenty of time to answer or he would just join in by showing me where in the text the answer to the question was. There are many many ways of “testing” comprehension without speaking. I think the reason they focus on it so much is by the time they get to Y6 and then high school there are so many children who can “read” but have no idea what they have actually read and obviously with more challenging text and work in high school they need to fully understand it. I do agree though that sometimes it goes completely overboard which is the case here.
I would also argue that by the time he has read the same book 5 times in a year, the comprehension becomes pointless as he knows it off by heart.
In your case I would be tempted to just refuse to read the school books and just let him read his own books and enjoy them.

What happened to the editing function? Oh well, I had tried to write "should not be trying" .....

My DC gave up on school reading books by the time Reception was done. They had a love of reading and the books they were coming home with were boring. I didn't want to spoil their love of reading by enforcing them to read them so they just read books of their own choice which were far more advanced. I told the teachers this and they had no issue with it. The DC are 16 and 14 now and both still above average with reading and comprehension

As a TA in KS1, you’d be amazed at the amount of children who can read by barking at a text and saying the right words but have absolutely no idea what the words mean or can confidently answer comprehension and inference questions about the text. Reading is so so much more than being able to read and it needs to a priority right from the start rather than allowing children to progress through reading levels for the sake of it.
Multiple choice questions are also the worst choice for assessing comprehension as they can just randomly tick one and get it correct but they really have no understanding,
A speech delay should have no bearing on compensation as I’m assuming they can write their answers down like they need to in SATs papers. When we do guided reading groups at school, the children have to prove their answers using the words in the text. For example, it might say what colour boots did the bookmaker make? They need to find the appropriate page and line and prove it by reading the sentence which states the colour. This ensures all the children have the appropriate skills to find answers to questions within text as they progress through the school. We also do a huge amount of work on inference (what is implied but not said).
For the most part teachers are not deliberately holding a child back for no reason.

"I can read, but I don't feel like I've fully got the meaning of the text" is high, and often it's what people feel is holding them back in life, because in the real world you read to understand.

But is that not an entirely different skill? In your example of an adult being unable to understand a document about their workplace structure although they could read it - they similarly wouldn't understand it if it was, for example, read aloud to them.

I have a degree in English. I could 'read' a document in which someone was describing advanced physics, but I wouldn't be able to understand it. I wouldn't consider that a reflection on my reading ability, or even my comprehension skills.

In the specific case of work documents, sadly in 2025 a high percentage of them are poorly written waffle, which even the author doesn't understand - but few people are brave enough to confess this, creating an emperor's new clothes situation.

Barking out print isn’t the sign of a good reader and won’t get you through SATS. Multiple
choice questions take little skill.It’s far better to learn good reading skills- inference, retrieval, prediction, explaining etc with texts that are accessible. He probably is struggling in some of the key skills. I’d be grateful his teacher is on it and scrutinising his reading skills.

I learnt very quickly to ignore what was happening with reading at school. I let them crack on with their levels and at home DC read whatever they want but I stretch them. So my ds is banded as blue I think at school but is reading chapter books easily at home.

For most, reading the words is the easy bit. It's the understanding that's harder, so the school is right to hold back until the understanding improves.

Oh yes, I remember brain gym! Haha it didn't make any sense even then.
In terms of their defensiveness, there's a thing called 'fidelity to the scheme', where they are told they will be hauled over the coals if they don't get either perfect results or perfect fidelity. It's taken all skill out of the job. I actually stopped being classroom based because of it, I think the whole thing is disgusting.
The people who put the schemes together are rolling in the profits while the students have been turned off reading for life. It's immoral.

Yup so frustrating. DD was stuck on "level 4" for months in year 1 as we were told she couldn't start the next level until year 2. Reassessed in sept of year 2 and she's out of the reading scheme and on to being a "free reader". So she re-read all those low level books for nothing! I think your plan is probably best.

Yes, that's what I did. I just ignored the books the school gave my dc. I filled in the reading record sometimes saying which book (from home) they were reading and how much they'd read. The dc and I talked about the books, so I knew perfectly well they had good comprehension. I'm a (secondary) teacher though, so maybe I'm more prepared to ignore certain things schools do/say!