Impact of Move4words in schools

UK primary and secondary schools have run their own trials of Move4words and have provided us with data from more than 800 children in Year 3 to Year 7. The outcomes of these trials are impressive.

We've used the "effect size", so we can compare our results to those from many other educational research studies, and on the effects of exercise on cognitive performance (more)

All studies were done in regular UK classrooms, mostly in areas of relative deprivation where literacy rates are lower than the national average, high proportions of children need free school meals and speak English as a second language.

Click here to read an overview of the results of all the school trials of M4W

Published Evidence

The first part of our research is now published in the peer-reviewed journal Improving Schools.

Click here to read the journal article abstract

A brief overview was presented at the International Symposium on the Neurobiology of Dyslexia in April 2013.

Download the PDF of the poster here

SEN

Move4words has the greatest impact with low ability children. In all the school trials, the biggest impact was achieved by the bottom 5% of the ability range, with really dramatic improvements in academic performance in reading, writing and maths, and in reading age and speed.

The bottom 20% made great strides forward in academic performance and reading, and higher ability ranges improved significantly in most areas, too.

More about SEN

KS2 SATs

Low-achieving schools achieved a 20 per cent rise in the number of Year 6 pupils reaching their target of Level 4 or above including English and Maths.

This was three times the improvement achieved by comparable schools not using Move4words, 235 children did M4W..... (more)

More about KS2 SATs

Progress through KS2

Children in Years 3, 4 and 5 advanced considerably faster through the National Curriculum levels in reading, writing and maths in the year following Move4words, compared to their progress in the year before the intervention started.

Progress rates doubled for below-average pupils ......(more)

More about KS2 Progress

Reading Age

Move4words has brought about large improvements in reading for 483 children in Years 3 to 7.

Improvements in reading age were three to nine times greater than typical age-related reading gains, and are significantly better than for comparison groups of children who did not do Move4words. Children with lower abilities improve the most, narrowing the gap in achievement.

Reading Speed

Reading speeds increased by 25 percent for slow readers in Year 3 through to Year 7 (study of 807 children), while very slow readers more than doubled their speed. Already fast readers do not speed up significantly.

Long Term Impact

Three years after the end of the intervention in Year 8, exam performance was enhanced at age 16.

Average long-term gains were a complete GCSE grade across all GCSEs taken and significantly higher numbers of A*-C grades and total points scores than matched groups who had not done the programme..... (more)

More about Long Term Impact

Concentration & Writing

Concentration levels increased by 20% according to pupils in Years 6 and 7 who initially reported poor concentration.

Writing speed increased by 30% and spelling errors went down by 28% for Year 7 students who did M4W... (more)

More about Concentration & Writing