The effectiveness of Additional Literacy Support (ALS) in Years 3 and 4

This study compared the progress in reading and spelling of 256 children in 11 classes in 9 English primary schools in Years 3 and 4, and a partially overlapping sample of 126 children who received additional help with literacy during 1 year. Teachers and teaching assistants used either Additional Literacy Support (ALS), a highly structured set of small group teaching materials devised by the English National Literacy Strategy, or a wide variety of other materials including other published intervention programmes, reading scheme-based, computer-based and individually designed interventions, or a combination of ALS and other interventions. The influence of a broad range of contextual factors were investigated, especially whether children's qualities, school factors such as socio-economic status and class size, and delivery differences made significant differences to the outcomes of the different interventions. The study used a naturalistic quasi-experimental design, in which teachers were asked to record details of their children and interventions without altering their professional decisions, which has not been used before in investigating literacy difficulties in context. ALS was marginally more effective than other interventions in the majority of classes, but was clearly superior in value for money terms. Children's qualities did not appear to affect outcomes. Although children receiving additional help made better than average progress, overall catch-up was limited, especially in spelling.