The relationship between adjustment to school and success in reading by the end of the reception year

The aim of a study at the Institute of Education, University of London, was to investigate the reading development of children as they arrive in mainstream school in order to assess their progress from the emergent literacy phase into the early stages of beginning conventional reading. The main findings are that if children arrive at school with well developed ability to identify and label letters of the alphabet, and write their name, and possess sound understanding of the concepts about print, and they adjust positively to school, the new school entrants have an 80% chance of reading at least in line with their chronological age by the end of the reception year (Riley, 1995, in press). This paper focuses on the important finding that if children settle well into school they are four times as likely to be successful with early reading, and the paper also discusses the implications of this finding for reception class teachers.