When good teaching is not enough: The reading gap that phonics cannot necessarily narrow

Even when children have every advantage, some still fall behind, and the reason for this may feel unexpected. We might think we know more about teaching and learning now than at any point in our history.

Schools focus on providing everything children need to read well and enjoy learning.Children have access to great teachers, an approved phonics programme, and to specialist support as required, and yet there are gaps.

Even though some children are given every opportunity, they cannot take advantage of the teaching, or assimilate the phonics and the most poignant thing is, that to begin with they want to learn as much as anyone else does.

Like you, I want children to enjoy reading, to fall in love with a book, whether that’s fiction or non-fiction or any other genre. What matters to me is that children are not left behind, especially in their reading. It was only recently that I ‘joined the dots’ realising I was once that child, dyslexic but undiagnosed (until I was an adult). I was quiet, compliant, in my shell, and anxious because I did not understand anything that I read and had concluded that I was ‘missing something’. I emerged from that shell when my school offered me subsidized violin lessons, then I was lucky enough to have free cello lessons, and 18 months later a fully funded Junior Exhibition to the Royal College of Music on Saturdays. My reading had transformed and I passed the 11 plus two months later. The so-called deficit that had clung to me like a shadow was only an illusion after all.

So if resources and teaching are not the issue, what is? Perhaps the answer lies in how we define fairness in education

Equality versus equity in education: Why some children need a different kind of support

Some pupils need help with hunger before they can learn, for others it’s rhythm that holds them back. Food stops hunger. You might ask what does rhythm stop? In my experience of working with children for over thirty years, rhythm stops vigilance and dread, anxiety and fear.The mechanism is different but the principle is the same. If we address the underlying condition, learning becomes accessible Food and rhythm bond us together socially and boost our sense of belonging. In this way, nature rewards us for keeping ourselves safe and well.

Equality in education means that all children are given the same opportunities to access the curriculum. Just as we recognise that children who are hungry cannot learn, the children who are ‘on edge’, ’sensitive’ or withdrawn are also unable to access the curriculum. This may explain why there is a gap.

In a more equitable system, we could support children who are deemed to be particularly ‘sensitive’, ‘on edge’ or withdrawn by building their awareness of rhythm once a week. This isn’t an alternative to conventional teaching, but supplements a school’s phonics programme as a targeted and precise intervention for those children who do not engage as well as their peers.

Reading fluency after the phonics screening check: What assessment data are telling us

As schools enter a period of assessments and leaders anticipate the next set of data landing, everyone knows that the SATs reading paper asks a lot of the children. Coherence, fluency and flow are essential if pupils are to finish this paper. With a magic wand, we’d give every child the habit of reading, the enjoyment of reading and the access to libraries and books. Whlst reading for pleasure remains an aspiration for many children, Ofsted has identified improvements worth noting.

According to Ofsted (2024) decoding has improved since the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check, but now schools are unsure of how to build fluency and comprehension well. This observation is insightful because if decoding was the barrier, more phonics would be a plausible solution.

The neuroscience of reading fluency: How rhythm builds the cognitive foundations that matter

There’s a growing body of research literature investigating the role of rhythm in relation to reading development. A consistent pattern has emerged to build insight into the mechanism that links awareness of rhythm with reading.

A pattern has emerged, showing that precise timing can serve as a lever to increase inhibitory control, one of three core executive functions. Imagine you are threading a fine needle. Inhibitory control is necessary at every stage of the process.

Orienting towards the task: we quieten the mind and hold the needle still, so that our chances of success are increased

Controlling the thread: moving the thread close to the eye of the needle requires control of the movement and the speed of the movement.

Observing in stillness: as the thread enters the eye of the needle, the change in direction from pushing to pulling the thread must not disturb the stillness of the other hand holding the needle.

The link between executive function and our early evolution as humans has fascinated me for decades. As a doctoral student, I had an article published, ‘Stamping, Clapping and Chanting; An ancient learning pathway?’ At the time, my second supervisor said I was being ‘cinematic’ rather than scholarly. This wasn’t my intention at all. Rather, I was exploring the evolutionary roots of moving in time as a group. My assertion was that humans may have not only bonded using rhythm, but may also have built executive functions using synchronized movement. This was more than a hunch as I’d seen first hand how quickly rhythm was able to boost children’s reading. Now that data are being published in research journals linking rhythm with executive function, 25 years later, I’m glad that I didn’t change the title.

A paper published in Acta Paediatrica (Visee et al., 2025) reviewed 27 peer reviewed papers targeting children who were typically developing or had acquired brain injuries. Of these, 23 reported positive effects of music and rhythm on at least one cognitive domain, but predominantly executive functioning, attention and intelligence. From this, we can see that rhythm doesn’t just engage children, it strengthens the cognitive systems that make learning possible.

When I read a research paper there are a few simple things that I pay close attention to. Just because every paper is written with authority and to publishable standards, doesn’t mean that I take the findings at face value.

There are tensions in the literature to be aware of. The brain strengthens its networks to allow them to work faster and more efficiently. Neuroplasticity enables the brain to strengthen and reorganize its networks in response to repeated precise input, which is why consistency of practice is key to intervention. There is also a process of atrophy which means that redundant circuits disappear.

When viewed through the lens of neuroplasticity, learning does not depend so much on innate ability or innate deficits, but may be developed by working with the brain as a dynamic adaptable system. Old ideas about how we learn are constantly being updated. The deficit model of learning has a long and illustrious tail and continues to dominate for now, but I predict that play, dance, music and sport will enjoy a renaissance in education, as we learn to appreciate the importance of timing for learning.

The reason I work with lower attaining children is because my approach was developed in the first instance to help pupils who were behind their peers and the gap was widening year on year. As their cello teacher, I discovered straight away that none of the conventional approaches worked. The moment I asked myself, ‘was it me or them?’ was the moment I opted to ignore the deficit model. Their teacher had told me that if I couldn’t teach them she’d understand.

It wasn’t hard to ask them about what they were good at and follow the breadcrumbs. By the way, does the ‘what are you good at?’ question always lead to football? So, as it turned out they were very engaged when using their feet, and could learn if I asked them to start with their feet.

These children responded well to a rhythm-based intervention and this is how my rhythm-based adventure started more than 30 years ago. When I began my PhD, I worked with a mixed ability group and there was no significant effect because the children working at expectation were well-adjusted and already able to participate in lessons. When I isolated the lower attaining children in the dataset, it was clear that they had made significant progress. A paper in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, by Dees and Cooper (2025) references Rhythm for Reading directly in their literature review. By using a ‘whole class’ participant group, their research differs fundamentally from mine. The next frontier in the field in my opinion will be a paper identifying precisely why lower attaining readers respond in a distinctive way to rhythm. Having built a case-study over a ten year period, I am in a position to publish this.

The EEF trial: Understanding the evidence rating for Rhythm for Reading

A randomised controlled trial is considered the gold standard of educational evidence. I wanted Rhythm for Reading to meet that standard, to build a robust evidence base before offering the programme to schools, and to demonstrate that it could make a difference to the children who needed it most.

The RCT went ahead in 2013. During the second half of the term, all but one of the participating schools were subject to Ofsted inspections, which affected participation and follow-up data collections. In one school, follow-up assessments were conducted after the summer holiday period, some months after the intervention had finished. The EEF report was among the first six published in 2014. I continued working in the schools, delivering the programme to the pupils who had been in the control group and this time we were not affected by external factors.

The official evidence rating for Rhythm for Reading is ‘Not Evaluated’. This was confirmed in written correspondence from the Evidence for Impact team at University of York in December 2014, which set out the reasons clearly. Both the EEF study and an earlier study were shorter than the 12-week period the team required for reading intervention research. Neither of the two studies included follow-up data to test lasting impact. And in the EEF study, the team were concerned that the intervention was developed by the programme developer rather than independently, which they noted as a limitation in terms of scalability.

These are methodological criteria, not findings about whether the programme works. ‘Not Evaluated’ means the studies conducted so far have not met the threshold for a rating. It is not the case that the programme has been assessed and found ineffective.

Since that review, the peer-reviewed evidence supporting rhythm-based reading intervention has grown and whilst these papers obtain results that reflect their methodology - such as using a whole class population rather than a lower attaining group, it is clear that the field is moving towards a deeper understanding of rhythm, albeit with low specificity. The question of who benefits most from rhythm-based intervention , and why, is one I have been exploring in schools for over a decade. That work informs the programme as it stands today.

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REFERENCES

Dees, L. & Cooper, P.K. (2025). Effects of a Phonics-Integrated Music Rhythm Intervention on Reading Fluency and Accuracy with Children. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12325194/

Ofsted (2024) Telling the story: the English education subject report. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/subject-report-series-english/telling-the-story-the-english-education-subject-report accessed 10/05/26

Visee, J.G.J. et al. (2025). Music and Rhythm as Promising Tools to Assess and Improve Cognitive Development in Children: A Scoping Review. Acta Paediatrica, 114(10), 2430–2442. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12420879/