We often think about attainment gaps in reading when SATs results are published and scrutinised in the summer months. There are discussions about regional differences and whether girls are more advanced in their reading than boys. For me, the attainment gap in reading is most obvious when children return to school in September.

At the beginning of the new school year, some children get off to a flying start, especially if they took part in a ‘Summer Reading Challenge’. This type of scheme encourages children to borrow and read library books throughout the summer break. When children return having read regularly over the summer, their fluency is steady, their vocabulary refreshed and their comprehension stronger than before the holiday.

For other children who don’t have this kind of structure in place, or access to books at home, they come back to school having read very little. The return to school means cranking up their reading skills and wondering how they will manage to cope with the new level of expectation.

Well-prepared classmates appear to settle easily and to enjoy the academic challenges of the new school year. But, when returning to school feels like a battle, children know deep down that they are going to be struggling most days, unless something fundamental changes in the way they learn.

The opportunity to fall further behind in the summer is not only a reading problem, but also points to exposure to language. When the attainment gap widens during the summer and this happens every year, reading feels more effortful than ever; comprehension of the text is fleeting at best and confidence is low. This is the September reading gap and it impairs access to the KS2 curriculum.

Why the gap appears

Over the summer, children without regular reading practice lose their momentum. They read fewer words in context. They encounter fewer grammatical structures, and they miss opportunities to consolidate phonics and fluency. But there is another dimension which is often overlooked: executive functions.

The executive function dimension

Executive functions are the mental processes that allow us to focus on a particular activity, to update memory, and adapt to each situation. They underpin reading in ways that might be less visible, but are no less essential.

• Working memory: Holds grapheme–phoneme correspondence, as well as grammatical and contextual information, all the while building meaning from the text.

• Cognitive flexibility: Allows us to switch strategies and adapt our approach when we are faced with irregular words, complex syntax or plot twists.

• Inhibitory control: maintaining attention and focus on the text and even becoming absorbed by what’s coming up in the reading.

When fluency doesn’t develop well enough to support reading, these executive functions are often fragile. For example, attention can fade and scatter if working memory and inhibitory control are weak. During the long summer break, executive functions can weaken even further through a lack of practice and also if children experience a stressful situation. This is more likely happen among those children who are already behind in reading.

You see, the September reading gap is not only about knowledge loss, but also speaks to returning to school with executive functions under strain.

Why rhythm helps close the gap

Early Classical texts show that thousands of years ago, these civilizations used rhythm to bring precision to warfare and that rhythm in dancing, singing and recitations was also valued as a mark of social refinement. Early texts show that classical civilizations had a clear understanding of the importance of rhythm for learning, particularly in terms of disciplined muscular training and military drill. Even when in the era that followed, military operations were conducted on horseback, rhythm continued to bring people together by instilling a feeling of group strength and cohesion.

Rhythm-based drills that involved people moving in time together became a tool to sharpen attention, support memory, and nurture the flexible timing needed for fluent coordination of these maneuvres, but I would say that rhythm would also have tightened the collective mind of a military unit and improved fast-paced assessment of context, understanding of what was happening and the immediacy of the unit’s response.

In reading a text the same thing happens, rhythm brings precision and fluency to inefficient reading, and it also builds sensitivity to contextual and grammatical cues.

Rhythm, by its nature focuses attention at the onset (the front edge) of the smallest sounds of language (which are phonemes) and allows language to be processed with greater sensitivity to grammatical structure and other cues. This increase in precision, anticipation and efficiency, means that children with weaker reading can benefit both in terms of their reading fluency and their executive functions.

In my experience of working with pupils aged 5 - 19, rhythm-based practice can close the September gap in as little as three weeks, in just ten minutes a week.

In pilot schools, leaders observed pupils reading with prosody for the first time — this was a shift that became audible within three sessions. And if you would like to see how these ideas can be applied directly in schools, I invite you to join my live webinar:

Executive Functions and Reading: Unlocking Hidden Barriers in the New Term

📅 Thursday 25th September, 7.00PM BST

👉 [Register here]

Reflection for leaders

Every September, reading assessments highlight the pupils who remain outside the comfort zone of fluency. Whether fast but not fluent, or slow and effortful, they are missing the relaxed flow where decoding and comprehension align. Taking action this term means change will be visible before Christmas assessments. That offers relief and real advantage for pupils and teachers alike.

This is also a moment for leadership. Trusts and schools that take the lead on evidence-based practice set the standard for others to follow. Rhythm for Reading has already helped pupils discover prosody — the sound of comprehension itself, in just three sessions.

👉 You can explore how the programme works in practice, with measurable gains in fluency and comprehension in one term. [CPD details and booking]