Comprehension in Secondary: Clearer Guidance on Teaching than on Tracking

Introduction

A pupil may read accurately at word level yet still struggle to understand longer sentences, integrate ideas across paragraphs or evaluate claims within a text. When this happens, it limits the higher-level thinking expected of them.

In secondary school, this matters because reading increasingly mediates access to learning. New concepts are introduced through text, and students are expected to build understanding through extended written material. By GCSE, they must make sense of long and demanding texts across subjects. Beyond school, the ability to construct meaning from written language is a critical skill. Comprehension is therefore a central capability in both secondary education and in life.

Given this, understanding students’ reading ability on entry to secondary is taken seriously. This tends to be assessed rigorously on entry and drives an initial intervention process. However, how far comprehension continues to be monitored explicitly into later secondary is less consistently defined.

What Makes Comprehension Difficult in Secondary Contexts

Comprehension difficulty in secondary school reflects the interaction between pupils’ capabilities and the increasing demands of subject texts. A key factor underlying this interaction is cognitive load. Constructing meaning from text requires pupils to hold information in working memory while integrating it with knowledge and reasoning. 

As pupils progress through secondary school, the demands placed on reading increase in several ways. Subject texts rely heavily on academic vocabulary and subject-specific terminology, often assuming background knowledge that pupils may not yet possess. The language also becomes denser and structurally more complex, while the reasoning expected of readers grows more demanding: pupils must compare interpretations, evaluate evidence and integrate ideas across sections of text.

Unfamiliar words and new content both create immediate cognitive demands and can disrupt understanding. Where reading fluency is limited, more working memory is taken up by processing the text itself, leaving less capacity for meaning. And often students are challenged by the act of sustaining their reading for long enough to generate meaning.

Understanding these challenges explains the success of disciplinary literacy and current school guidance. However, the complexity of the process for an individual pupil can make it difficult to form a clear picture of their underlying difficulty. A pupil may read aloud reasonably well yet struggle with sustained comprehension. Some students develop coping or avoidance strategies, while others appear disengaged. As a result, comprehension difficulties may not always present clearly as reading problems, but instead through poor or inconsistent performance.

The Guidance — and Where It Stops

Current approaches to comprehension in secondary schools reflect a series of shifts in research and guidance over the past two decades.

Earlier work placed considerable emphasis on explicit strategy instruction: teaching pupils to summarise, predict, question and clarify as they read. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) practice guide Improving Adolescent Literacy (2008) recommended explicit comprehension strategy instruction, and these ideas shaped professional development and classroom routines in many schools.

Subsequent guidance broadened the focus. The Education Endowment Foundation’s Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools (2019) positioned disciplinary literacy — the explicit teaching of how reading works differently in different subjects — as a central organising idea. Rather than treating comprehension as a generic skill, the emphasis shifted towards a subject-led model.

Within this, increasing attention has been given to vocabulary and background knowledge as key components of disciplinary literacy. Research suggests that strategy instruction alone has limited impact when pupils lack the vocabulary or domain knowledge needed to interpret what they read. As a result, many schools have placed greater emphasis on systematic vocabulary development and knowledge-rich curricula, alongside teaching subject-specific ways of reading.

Taken together, these developments have clarified the direction of travel.There is broad agreement that reading should not be assumed to develop incidentally in secondary school. Nor should it be taught as a stand-alone skill. Instead, it is best developed through explicit reading instruction within subjects, supported by vocabulary development and knowledge building.

However, guidance is stronger on instructional direction than on long-term monitoring or late-stage diagnosis. What remains less clear is how schools should identify persistent comprehension difficulties in older pupils, and what forms of support are most appropriate once initial strategies and vocabulary work are in place. In other words, there is increasing clarity about how reading should be taught, but less agreement about how schools should recognise when comprehension remains weak.

How Schools Identify and Respond to Comprehension Difficulty

Most secondary schools screen reading on entry to Year 7 and produce a “reading age” or standardised score. These results are usually combined with other data, typically Year 6 SATs and teacher judgement, to identify pupils who need support. 

Responses range from instructional approaches such as group reading to the use of commercial programmes. Pupils identified with Special Educational Needs (SEN) typically receive more intensive support, often including TA time to deliver structured programmes. This usually sits alongside a wider whole-school approach to disciplinary literacy.

Beyond initial intervention though, monitoring of comprehension is less standardised. Whether an intervention is judged to have been sufficient is often a matter of professional judgement, made within the realities of school resourcing constraints. By Key Stage 4, annual reading age tests are still common, but less emphasis is placed on more granular assessments of reading ability, unless pupils are identified as SEN. Difficulties may instead be inferred from patterns of attainment across subjects and from teacher observations.

As a result, decisions in later secondary often depend more heavily on professional judgement within a resource-constrained system than on discrete comprehension measures.

Where This Leaves Us

Existing guidance provides a clear direction of travel: explicit reading instruction, vocabulary development and disciplinary literacy. What remains less settled is how schools recognise when comprehension difficulties persist and how those difficulties should be revisited over time.

This project is examining how secondary schools identify and revisit comprehension issues over time, how confident practitioners feel in those judgements, and how these decisions shape pupils’ access to learning through Year 9 and Key Stage 4.