Glossary

Standard Age Score.

Use this to understand how your students are performing against the standardised sample.

It is important to understand that scores between 89 - 111 are within the average range and that if a student scores within this range on each NGRT assessment then they are performing as expected for their age.

Stanine or ‘standard nine’.

This breaks the SAS scores into nine groups to make the group level scores easier to analyse.

Use stanines to group students across a cohort when planning in next steps and monitoring which students are in line, below or above age related expectations.

The NGRT assessment is broken into two parts: Sentence Completion and Passage Comprehension – you will get a stanine for both parts. We have based the Reading Support Quadrant on this.

Reading age demonstrates a student’s ability in terms of the average of others at that age.

They are derived from the raw score at different age points.

Reading Ages tell us about the reading ability of a single child and a single point in time.

They are not useful when monitoring progress as the rate learners progress with their reading varies, meaning you cannot genuinely report monthly progress. A child at age 6 will expect to progress at a much faster rate than a child aged 12 for example.

National Percentile Rank.

The NPR ranks a learner’s performance against others in the representative sample and is used to show the percentage of individuals from within that sample, who scored equal to, or less than the learner’s particular score.

A student with an NPR of 50 means they are scoring as positively as 50% of the standardised national sample.

FAQs

Effective provision should be well-matched to a student's individual strengths and challenges. The appropriate next steps for one student may be very different to another – colleagues should adjust, or 'graduate' provision in order to personalise adaptations and/or interventions to suit their needs. In some settings this may be referred to with other terminology such as 'waves' or 'tiers' of support (for example) – the intentions are the same.

Prior to the implementation of adjustments or interventions it is helpful to determine the anticipated outcomes of such support and how these outcomes might be measured. In some instances, these may be monitored by way of teacher observations or skills development, but in others this could involve pre- and post-intervention testing which might include the use of standardised tests. NGRT can be used termly, and a progress report can be used to analyse impact. Similarly, YARC (Forms A & B) could be used to provide a detailed profile before and after the intervention.

Evidence-based interventions are used to help students close gaps and to improve skills in reading. In many cases these interventions have the desired outcomes, leading to students being back on track with their peers. However, for some students, even a skilfully delivered intervention may not help them to overcome specific challenges – more specialist support may be required. We might describe these students as 'resistant' to intervention.

Identifying barriers to learning is a process that takes time and requires a range of information and data (both qualitative and quantitative) to build a detailed profile of need. We would recommend talking with as many stakeholders as possible to consider context when making decisions related to a student's strengths and challenges and to determine the most appropriate screener(s) to use to investigate these. The needs of each student (and school) will be different—establish if there are particular types of needs that are common within your setting and prioritise these as a place to start.

Muhammed

SC and PC 5+ but SC is lower

Growing independent reader. Reading is limited by vocabulary and syntax knowledge.

This is Muhammed. He is growing in independence with his reading. He is a good reader but the difference between his word reading (SC) and comprehension (PC) suggests he has a ‘spikey profile’ (a discrepancy of more than two stanines). His reading is limited by significantly weaker vocabulary and syntax knowledge compared to his comprehension. He reads to learn but does not read for pleasure. His overall performance may be limited by his ‘spikey’ profile. He needs to be supported with more complex vocabulary and should be encouraged to read high quality texts for learning and enjoyment.

Key Questions

Are teachers aware of Muhammed's nuance of needs?
How can you ensure he understands the value in reading beyond the curriculum?
Would explaining the impact across all of his subjects support him to form stronger reading habits?
Can you work with him to find out what genre of text he might enjoy?
Can you set him challenges to develop vocabulary?
Is he supported through rich opportunities for 'talk'?
Do teachers extend his vocabulary when they talk in the classroom?

Next steps

You need to:

Understand his receptive vocabulary
Make adaptations for his need in lessons so that he is 'stretched'
To work with colleagues so that support is aligned, and further investigation is considered. Are there any indications of dyslexia?
To gain insight into his wellbeing.

Muhammed may need:

To understand what value reading for pleasure holds
Exposure to high quality texts and vocabulary banks.

SEND Guide >

< Back to support quadrant

*These profiles are for illustrative purposes and have been created to help introduce just some of the varied learner profiles your NGRT data may show you, and to help support personalised learning. The profiles from your own NGRT data may share some similarities with the example profiles but it is important to consider each learner individually.

Anna

Dhanesh

Michel

Charlotte

Kaia

Anisha

Muhammed

Finn

Rhian

Sam

Senior Leadership Team - School Groups

Reading / Literacy Leader

Teacher

SEND Leaders

Students

SAS

Stanine

Reading Age

NPR

What is a Graduated Response Model?

How can I review the impact of intervention?

What does it mean if a student is ‘resistant’ to intervention?

What factors should I consider when exploring the SEND guide?

Muhammed

Key Questions

Next steps

You need to:

Muhammed may need: