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

[FishChipsandKipper]

DS was moving steadily through reading levels until a senior teacher decided this was all wrong and said no one can move levels until they’ve given ‘the verbal answers I approve of’ to show comprehension.

DS has now been on the same level for over a year and read some books 5 times.

DS has a speech delay, but can read well and answers multiple choice questions written down to show comprehension.

Do the school accept this? No. I’ve given up and bought my own reading books off Amazon.

Why do schools do this??

This is why I moved my DS to another school.
Similar story - a keen reader who was being actively turned off reading by an awful reading scheme and bone-headed school policy about moving through it. YANBU.

In our case they judged comprehension by a once-a-term test to see whether or not you could memorise facts from a book. Eg you’d be asked “what colour ball did Jack like best?” If you couldn’t remember (and you weren’t allowed to refer to the book to check, proving that this was about memory not about reading) then you were kept on the same band and the same five or six dull, too-easy books for another whole term.

I even offered to help fund a new reading scheme for the school but this offer was rejected by the head, so we gave up and moved school.

Believe me - complaining to the school is absolutely futile. Ultra defensive and as a complaint is through their school process, it is not impartial.

Plus they will 100% label me ‘difficult’ and this will backfire on my son.

Only 1 this year to go, and I hear next school is better.

Pseudoscience is rife in education - whichever poster said that! Anyone remember brain gym??

Library, second hand reading books off eBay plus I use a great app where he can answer comprehension questions no problem!

My son was always held back. The books were so bland and boring that I really don't blame him for not being able to predict what happened next as there were zero clues! He is now excellent at reading comprehension

Comprehension is really important. I have helped in primary school with reading. Several of the ‘ best’ readers could easily skip a page or paragraph and not notice because they had no idea what they were actually reading! Your dc speech delay and the reading assessment method is something to discuss with the teacher .

YANBU to be fed up. Is there a penalty for not reading the atrocious school books? If not (other than not moving up their completely imaginary 'bands'), just continue reading to/letting your son read whatever he is interested in. It's reading itself that is important. It doesn't matter if it's a novel, instruction manual, recipe book or comic. I don't know why school insist on sucking all the joy out of every learning opportunity. I gave up even pretending to read the abysmal books sent home from school midway through DS's reception year. It was too soul destroying. He's now in year 5 and loves going to the bookshop and library, has favourite authors and enjoys reading/being read to for pleasure.

@Acommonreader

I’m not saying it’s not important, it’s just that teachers seem to go into complete over-drive about some very ‘niche’ or old-fashioned book about ‘bee keeping’ - and if the child doesn’t verbalise some ‘niche’ answer which is either ‘in the teachers head’ - or - meet some bench marking criteria which is highly dubious or subjective, then the child is held back for a term until they get round to bench marking 30 kids again!!

Yep I’m just going to do my own method. Ignore the school books but ‘sign’ each week. The school never hear him read them anyway until the dubious ‘bench marking’ takes place again.

And don’t get me started on ‘Numbots’…
Apoarently it’s ‘homework’ but no teacher ever looks at it.

There is a joy in words, in getting glimpses of something half understood. You can lose yourself in something that is too hard to fully understand but grips you and keeps you fascinated.

I think we have forgotten this joy in the pragmatism and the constant assessment of school. People end up reading purely as a skill not as a source of inspiration and joy. Even very young kids can feel the pleasure of good writing if they are given the chance- I still remember that from early childhood, when I was reading things I didn't fully understand.
So feet people read novels or poetry this days- they are intimidated by the feeling of not quite knowing what something means because that feeling is seen as something to hold you back.

Have any of the diktats shared by previous posters come from independent schools?

@Medicimama Yes - my example was from an independent school.

Your teacher sounded quite old school @WimpoleHat . I’ve found individual teachers in state primary are often more competent than those in independent sector but the machine can crush their spirit a bit.

The school we had trouble with reading wise was a state primary. Supposedly a very high performing one. But it had not been inspected for a decade, had high staff turnover and the head had lost the plot.

We have quizzes about books, marked by a computer, to see if you read it ‘properly’. I disapprove entirely! I’m considering writing to the head actually, so will use some points made here.

We don’t read school books at home, we go to the library and buy lots of books and read for pleasure.

Part of the problem is that sometimes primary school teachers themselves are not hugely literate (or at least not people who know what it is to read avidly for pleasure) and seem almost insulted by the idea that a child might want to read ambitiously and widely. (And this has always been so; decades ago I was told, at age 7, that I should be trying to get "nine year old books" out of the tiny school library.)

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

@mrsconradfisher

The problem is DS has stayed in the same band for over a year, and is getting repeated reads of the same book as he has not verbally answered benchmarking questions as required. They have to get through 30 children, and I doubt this will be done again until next term.
The app he uses is multiple choice, but I sit with him when he selects and can see he is - pretty much 100% of the time choosing the correct answer.

Due to his speech, he often avoids answering questions or needs extra processing time. ‘I don’t know’ is often his verbal answer - but he wizzes through on the app.
I do think comprehension is sometimes a case of ‘guess the answer in the teacher’s head’ - and personally I think teacher’s go ‘overboard’ with the comprehension - in an almost ‘I know better’ way.

Bit like Scout in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ when you can tell the teacher’s ego is dented by Scout’s reading knowledge - and the teacher’s response is to ‘undo all the bad learning that has gone on’. Scout gets bored because she has to relearn what she already knows. Especially as Scout doesn’t ‘fit’ with the teacher’s latest fad, fashion or ‘learning method’.

I just want DS to have a new, exciting book that gives him a challenge.
Not to stagnate and read the same book 5 times until he ‘passes’ some benchmarking test that he will now have to wait another term for!