Abstract
To date, only one study has investigated educational attainment in poor (reading) comprehenders, providing evidence of poor performance on national UK school tests at age 11 years relative to peers (Cain and Oakhill, 2006). In the present study, we adopted a longitudinal approach, tracking attainment on such tests from 11 years to the end of compulsory schooling in the UK (age 16 years). We aimed to investigate the proposal that educational weaknesses (defined as poor performance on national assessments) might become more pronounced over time, as the curriculum places increasing demands on reading comprehension. Participants comprised 15 poor comprehenders and 15 controls; groups were matched for chronological age, nonverbal reasoning ability and decoding skill. Children were identified at age 9 years using standardized measures of nonverbal reasoning, decoding and reading comprehension. These measures, along with a measure of oral vocabulary knowledge, were repeated at age 11 years. Data on educational attainment were collected from all participants (n = 30) at age 11 and from a subgroup (n = 21) at 16 years. Compared to controls, educational attainment in poor comprehenders was lower at ages 11 and 16 years, an effect that was significant at 11 years. When poor comprehenders were compared to national performance levels, they showed significantly lower performance at both time points. Low educational attainment was not evident for all poor comprehenders. Nonetheless, our findings point to a link between reading comprehension difficulties in mid to late childhood and poor educational outcomes at ages 11 and 16 years. At these ages, pupils in the UK are making key transitions: they move from primary to secondary schools at 11, and out of compulsory schooling at 16.
Highlights
In the early stages of learning to read, children must learn to map letters onto sounds so that they can decode and recognize words
Mean raw scores on reading comprehension and oral vocabulary tasks are depicted in Figures 1A,C, respectively; mean standard scores appear in Table 1 but are replicated in Figures 1B,D for ease of comparison
Despite a wealth of research investigating cognitive and linguistic skills in poor comprehenders in Italy, the UK and the US (e.g., Catts et al, 2006; Carretti et al, 2009; Nation et al, 2010), and the likely constraint that reading comprehension difficulties will place on educational progress, research on educational attainment was previously restricted to just one study, conducted in the UK with 11-year-old children (Cain and Oakhill, 2006)
Summary
In the early stages of learning to read, children must learn to map letters onto sounds so that they can decode and recognize words. Research conducted in Italy, the UK and the US has made good progress with understanding the cognitive and linguistic profiles that characterize poor comprehenders in mid to late childhood (e.g., poor oral language, poor inferential skills; for reviews, see Nation, 2005; Floyd et al, 2006; Cain and Oakhill, 2007; Carretti et al, 2009) but we know very little about the progress that such children make in adolescence, and at school. We conducted a longitudinal study tracking reading, vocabulary, and educational attainment in poor comprehenders over the course of eight years: from age 9 to 16 years. Despite the likely educational consequences of the reading comprehension difficulties experienced by poor comprehenders, their difficulties may be masked by good reading accuracy in the classroom (Nation and Angell, 2006; Hulme and Snowling, 2011), and only one study to date has investigated educational attainment in this group (Cain and Oakhill, 2006)
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