Snappy Catch Up Phonics: Targeted Synthetic Phonics Intervention for Children in Norfolk in Transition from Year 6 to Year 7

INTERVENTION: Rapid Phonics intervention group and the Control group. There is no control task. Rapid Phonics is a published programme of lessons and literacy materials which aims to quickly allow children who are behind in their reading to catch up with their peers. This study will involve a 12 week course of instruction. Lessons are snappy and memorable and are designed to be fun. It features three stages of instruction, taking children from letter‐sound conversions to understanding complex irregular multisyllabic words within passages of text. CONDITION: Struggling readers as they move from primary to secondary school ; Mental and Behavioural Disorders ; Specific reading disorder PRIMARY OUTCOME: New Group Reading Test: it begins with sentence comprehension. Very weak readers will then answer simple phonics questions such as what is the sound at the start of a word. More able students will go on to answer questions about passages of text. A nationally age standardised score of reading will be used as the primary measure in the study. SECONDARY OUTCOME: Single Word Reading test (GL) assesses ability to read real words without context. PhAB nonword reading tests ability to read pseudowords (e.g. 'pib'), and so tests the phonological route to reading used when sounding out a word. Both these secondary measures produce a nationally age standardised score. INCLUSION CRITERIA: Struggling Year 6 readers in the participant schools conforming to the following eligibility criteria: 1. Who are predicted to gain National Curriculum Level 4C or below in English and who are eligible for free school meals 2. Who are predicted to gain National Curriculum Level 4C or below in English Randomization protocol will attempt to control for variability in eligibility criteria and in schools by treating them as stratification factors in the randomization process such that both the intervention and the control groups have more or less the same number of children recruited using the same eligibility criteria and from the same school. This pragmatic approach for recruiting children implies that the number of children recruited into the trial may differ between schools, but since each primary school will have equal representation in both the experimental and control groups, the difference in number of children recruited from the schools should ha