For too long, the most pervasive, broadly unanswered question in education has been how to tackle the disadvantage gap - a question attracting renewed focus with the publication of the Independent Inquiry into White Working-Class Educational Outcomes early this summer and the Milburn review into young people not in education, employment or training.
All manner of solutions are currently being promoted, but I remain convinced that the answer lies in early literacy. Get reading and writing fluency right, and you have secured the foundations for everything else. If you don’t, nothing else is possible.
In a bid to find out what’s possible in this space, colleagues at FFT Education and I spent 2025 visiting seven primary schools in England where disadvantaged pupils excelled in literacy.
We then began to try to work out what it was they were doing that we could codify. What could other schools take away and implement in their own practice?
Five learning areas for schools
In each of the schools we visited, at least 40 per cent of pupils were eligible for free school meals and disadvantaged pupils outperformed the national average for reading, writing and maths at the end of key stage 2.
FFT Education’s report, , distils these visits into five learning areas for schools and school leaders.
Below, we set them out:
1. A focus on nursery provision
All seven schools recognised the importance of early years and nursery provision in giving pupils a coordinated start in education.
One school described their nursery provision as “intense” - including a daily session to help pupils who are struggling with language - and another headteacher described opening a school nursery as the first priority of her headship. All schools also began some phonics teaching in nursery.
2. Consistent phonics teaching
The importance of phonics extended through Year 1 and Year 2, building on prior learning in the early years.
All school leaders emphasised the importance of consistency in phonics teaching, and tracking each child’s progress at least every half term allowed schools to identify any pupils who were falling behind.
The results speak for themselves, with most of the schools seeing 90 per cent or more of their pupils passing the phonics screening check each year.
3. A rich reading diet
However vital each school’s focus on phonics was, they all recognised it was not a silver bullet and coupled this with literacy teaching and fluency practice.
All the schools timetabled reading separately from phonics and broader literacy throughout Reception to Year 6.
All had a rich reading diet of whole texts to develop fluency and comprehension planned at school level.
4. Reviewing data and acting
Each school treated early literacy as a whole-school priority, with senior leaders reviewing reading data almost weekly and driving support for pupils falling behind.
Language needs were addressed from nursery, phonics interventions targeted the specific sounds at-risk children had to secure, and fluency (measured in words correct per minute) was a focus from Year 1 through to the end of KS2.
5. The moral message
This leadership was often phrased in moral terms - with one school leader warning that “pupils who don’t learn to read at school probably can’t read as adults”.
This framing heightens the importance of early literacy for parents and teachers by tying it directly to outcomes later in life, and it drove a conviction to ensure that every pupil can read.
Schools and teachers are working tirelessly every day to improve outcomes for pupils and to help those who are disadvantaged. I hope our insight offers a helpful guide to how they can improve early literacy and tackle the disadvantage gap.
I also hope this shows what really is possible. Closing the disadvantage gap is not impossible. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Eliza Hilton is policy associate at FFT Education
