What is NGRT and why do we use it?

A standardised, adaptive, termly assessment to measure reading skills against the national average. Use it to identify where intervention may be needed, and then to monitor impact and progress made.

~ New Group Reading Tests ~ 

The New Group Reading Tests (NGRT) is an assessment tool which intuitively measures a child’s reading skills. The test covers sentence completion and passage comprehension and in some cases, assess phonics knowledge. It is effective in measuring a student’s Reading Age, the difference between their Reading Age and their actual age and provides specific feedback and suggestions of support based on the results of the test. 

At Baysgarth we value the importance of the reading skills of our students; we know the significant impact that reading skills have on our students’ ability to do well at secondary school.

We also know that a students’ reading ability directly impacts on their success in all of their GCSE subjects and their opportunities in later life. Research has proven that weak reading skills limit the life chances of young people whereas good reading skills have a positive impact on our children's physical and mental health, their future income and their family life. We want to ensure that we can target any obstacles to our students making progress in their studies and being offered opportunities in future education as well as becoming well-rounded people who are life-long readers. Ultimately, we want to support and challenge our learners and this information supports us in doing that.

Over the past three years we have worked hard to develop and improve our students' reading skills and we assess the impact of this by using the New Group Reading Tests (NGRT). We cannot develop our students reading skills if we do not know what their starting points are, how they are progressing and what support they need in order to become fluent readers.

These tests tell us the reading age of our students in comparison to their actual age. This means that we can provide specific support to those students whose reading age is below or significantly below their actual age; who will find it challenging to access their subjects at secondary. 

The tests will produce a reading age, which is given in years and months as well as an SAS score. SAS stands for Standardised Age Score, which allows us to see how each child is performing compared to peers of the same age across the country. The tests also provide specific feedback as to the strengths of the students and the areas in which they most need support for example they may face challenges with retrieval information which they have read or struggle with understanding more complex vocabulary, for some students it may be that they find the organisation of a text challenging to understand and therefore can not link the events or information. Over the course of an academic year, our students will complete two NGRT reading tests and we will track their progress.

An SAS score of 100 means that a student's reading ability is exactly where it should be. Here are the SAS boundaries.

The tests also provide specific feedback as to the strengths of the students and the areas in which they most need support for example: they may face challenges with retrieving information which they have read or struggle with understanding more complex vocabulary, for some students it may be that they find the organisation of a text challenging to understand and therefore can not link the events or information. Once we know what our students need most support with, we can apply the correct strategies in the classroom and through bespoke intervention.

Over the course of an academic year, our students will complete one NGRT reading test in the summer term (Year 7 students will also take their very first NGRT test as part of their onboarding in September) and we will track their progress across their time at Baysgarth.

Our staff use the information and data to:

• identify students who need bespoke intervention;

• identify any barriers to learning for our students;

• inform seating plans in the classroom;

• direct questioning and support strategies to our students;

• edit and modify texts to the appropriate level for our learners.

• Use of NGRT data will allow teachers to target your child for deeper and more developed interpretations of their reading materials.

• We can offer your child more challenging texts and a variety of text types in school to widen their breadth reading.

• Collective Reading time can expose your child to a greater variety of fiction texts that cover important issues which will continue to build their cultural capital as well as exposing them to different literary styles and narratives. 

• The focus on vocabulary across the curriculum will allow your child to develop a more nuanced approach to their word usage both verbally and in their writing which in itself develops their comprehension of a variety of topics and contexts.

• Use of NGRT data will allow teachers to target your child for support in the classroom, using strategies specifically catered to their reading needs.

• Use of both verbal support and resources catered to students’ reading needs will be utilised in all lessons to support your child’s reading comprehension.

• Your child will be provided with the support needed to access the texts that they are reading in lessons.

• Collective Reading time can support students with building their reading skills by following the teacher as they read aloud to them, tracking the reading in the novel. This develops sight word recognition, fluency, pronunciation and comprehension skills.

• The focus on vocabulary across the curriculum will allow your child to develop their vocabulary and learn new or unfamiliar words / words which they are unsure of the meaning of as well as develop their receptive vocabulary (words they understand when they hear/read them) and active vocabulary (words they know how to use themselves in their speech and writing).