Closing the Gap: Quality Interventions to Maximise the Progress of the Lowest 20% (online)

Every school has children who find reading more challenging than their peers. The question is not whether we can identify them, but how effectively we support them to catch up and keep up.

Join this evidence-informed professional development session focused on the children who need us most: the lowest 20% of readers in your school. Drawing on the up-to-date research and effective practice, this session will help school leaders, reading leaders, SENDCOs, and classroom practitioners develop targeted approaches that accelerate progress and improve outcomes.

This practical session will explore how schools can identify barriers to reading, select the right interventions, and ensure that support is delivered with precision, consistency and impact.

You Will Explore
• What the research tells us about why the lowest 20% of readers fall behind
• How to identify specific barriers to reading using diagnostic assessment
• Designing targeted, high-impact interventions that make a measurable difference
• Effective approaches to developing decoding, fluency and language comprehension
• Practical strategies to assess, monitor and evaluate progress
• How to maximise the impact of teaching assistant-led interventions
• Whole-school approaches that sustain progress and prevent regression
• Creating clear pathways from intervention back into high-quality classroom teaching

Supporting every child to become a confident, successful reader begins with ensuring our most vulnerable readers receive the right support at the right time.