Measuring Reading Fluency – Key Learnings from New Research

In today’s globalised world, the ability to read proficiently is more vital than ever for students in international schools. Students are often from diverse backgrounds with varying levels of English language skills which can pose unique reading challenges that may impact their academic success.

Reading challenges can be seen in various forms, including difficulties with comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary acquisition. In international schools, these challenges are often intensified as many students may be learning in a second or third language.

FFT’s Reading Assessment Programme

Over the last few years, FFT Education, the leading literacy education experts, developed the Reading Assessment Programme (RAP), an online assessment tool to assess pupils on GPC accuracy, decoding accuracy and reading fluency.

Between September 2022 and August 2024, a total of 110,000 pupils from almost 700 schools completed 340,000+ assessments.

This new analysis of RAP data evidences how fluency in Key Stage 1 and 2 is influenced by a range of demographic factors, and how it relates to reading comprehension. These key learnings are helpful to international schools using the British national curriculum providing a current view of the reading fluency of students in each year group at Key Stage 1 and 2 in schools in England.

Reading fluency

Fluency is usually measured in terms of the number of words within a passage of text that a child can accurately read aloud in one minute. We take ‘words correct per minute’ (WCPM) as a broad indicator of fluency.

FFT Education’s research demonstrated that fluency typically increases during Key Stages 1 and 2, from 16 words per minute in Autumn of Year 1 to 114 words per minute in Summer of Year 6.

Figure 1.0 Median Oral Reading Fluency by Year Group and Term

However, within each year group and term we observe a large degree of variation. In the following chart pupils are allocated to quartiles based on word count per minute, a median score is shown within each quartile.

Figure 2.0 Median Oral Reading Fluency by Year Group, Term and Quartile

The median of the lowest quartile of readers (25%) read aloud at 72 WCPM by the end of Key Stage 2.

FFT Education’s research also examined reading fluency between boys and girls. A small gap began to emerge at ages 10 and 11, just before the end of Key Stage 2 however there was not much variation in oral reading fluency.

Figure 3.0 Media Oral Reading Fluency by Age, Term and Gender

The association between fluency and Key Stage 2 Reading outcomes

2,000 schools supplied FFT Education with end of Key Stage 2 reading test data in 2024. In the research, FFT link Year 6 pupils’ KS2 reading comprehension test results to their Year 6 RAP assessments. Data was used for 3,600 pupils who completed 2 or more RAP assessments during Year 6. There is a strong correlation between fluency and reading comprehension (r=0.68). It is also consistent with psychological research on reading suggesting that reading fluency is a necessary foundation for reading comprehension.

Figure 5.0 Pupils’ Year 6 average WCPM compared to their KS2 Reading paper result

Pupil characteristics and the association between fluency and comprehension

The report also examined to what extent differences in reading fluency account for the well-established relationships between pupil characteristics and KS2 reading comprehension outcomes. To investigate, we split the bands described above by different pupil characteristics.

Figure 6.0: Percentage and (number) of pupils achieving Age-Related Expectations in KS2 Reading paper by WCPM band and different pupil characteristics

There are some notable differences: for instance, 47% of girls with an oral reading fluency of less than 100 WCPM achieved ARE, whereas only 38% of boys in this band did. Among pupils with SEND, around two-thirds of the gap in reading scores is explained by lower levels of reading fluency.

Key Learnings from the report

• Reading fluency develops as students move from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2, and there is variation in reading fluency within age cohorts. For international students, variations in age cohorts will often be due to factors like their native language background, exposure to English reading materials, and cultural differences in reading practices.
• Oral reading fluency is correlated with Key Stage 2 reading comprehension outcomes and, given that oral reading fluency is quick and easy to measure, it’s likely to be an extremely useful indicator for international schools to track. A comprehensive reading assessment programme will help track oral reading fluency and highlight at an early stage the students that need extra support particularly in areas such as vocabulary understanding and pronunciation.
• The low level of reading fluency of the lowest quartile of readers is likely to indicate a reading difficulty that will impact this group across the curriculum. Monitoring the oral reading fluency of the lowest quartile of readers and addressing this through early intervention will help struggling readers to bridge the gap more effectively.
• Fluency teaching and fluency practice throughout Key Stage 1 and 2, including a focus on oral reading fluency through repeated reading of English reading materials, choral reading to practice pronunciation and partner reading to improve comprehension are likely to be very supportive in developing fluency of international students.

FFT Education’s full report on reading fluency can be read here.

FFT’s Reading Assessment Programme

FFT’s Reading Assessment Programme is a simple and effective online assessment tool designed to assess students on their GPC Accuracy, Decoding Accuracy and Fluency Levels (Words Correct Per Minute). It can be used alongside FFT’s international literacy programmes including Phonics, Catch-up, Spelling & Reading, Reciprocal Reading or Aspire subscriptions. Learn more about FFT Education’s Reading Programme for International Schools here or join our webinars:

09:00 session: https://fft-org-uk.zoom.us/webinar/register/1217415996512/WN_linGq3WuSuiUhm_48dlyjw

15:45 session: https://fft-org-uk.zoom.us/webinar/register/8217415997564/WN_j2H9dZfgQPenjivbI5Rw-Q

About the Authors

 Eliza Hilton

Eliza Hilton leads the Education programme at the Fischer Family Foundation and manages all the programme investments and funding. She enjoys representing the Apex project to different stakeholders and developing and supporting our partnership with FFT Education.

Mike Fischer

Mike Fischer is Project Director, Chair of the Fischer Foundation and Founder and Director of the Fischer Family Trust. The Apex Project is the vision of Mike Fischer. Mike leads the Apex project day-to-day, interacting with school leaders and staying at the coalface of education where he likes being the most!

Kathy Rastle

Kathy Rastle is a Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London who has published over 100 articles on the neurocognitive mechanisms that underpin reading and learning to read. Her research has received over 20 years of continuous funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and has won a series of major prizes. She recently won the Economic and Social Research Council’s ‘Celebrating Impact’ Prize recognizing the global impact of her work on ‘Ending the Reading Wars’.  She is a past President of the Experimental Psychology Society and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Academia Europaea.

Dave Thomson
Dave Thomson is chief statistician at FFT with over fifteen years’ experience working with educational attainment data to raise attainment in local government, higher education and the commercial sector.

Paul Charman

Paul Charman has 20 years’ experience working in educational technology, assessment and data. He joined FFT as a Director in 2012 and was appointed Managing Director in 2014. Before joining FFT, Paul worked for 14 years in senior roles at RM where he led the team which designed and developed education data platforms and services for schools for DFE and Ofsted. Paul has been Chair of Governors at Dyson Perrins CE Academy in Malvern since 2011.

Natasha Plaister

Natasha Plaister is a statistician at FFT Education Datalab, having previously spent 10 years as a project manager at the Institute of Physics.