I want to tell you the story of my school and the part that reading is playing in changing its fortunes.

Birchen Coppice Primary Academy is a school in Kidderminster, Worcestershire. It was built for the children of two social housing estates built side by side, one of which was originally built for a settled traveller community. It has always been an area with challenges. Socially and economically speaking, the school ranks in the bottom 0.5% in England.

It has never had a good Ofsted report. In May 2022, it was a judged to be a school that needed to be in "special measures". Eight heads had come and gone in as many years. Results had reached rock bottom (bottom 4% in KS1 English test) and its pupil exclusions were through the roof. In the year 2021 to 2022 there were 111 temporary exclusions and six permanent exclusions with 343 school days lost. This would have been an extreme year for a large secondary school – Birchen Coppice is a small primary school of around 200 pupils.

When I went to visit the school in the summer of 2022, I was struck by the poor behaviour – pupils were running around the school grounds when they should have been in lessons and they refused to come in from the playground at the end of play. In fact, they refused to do most things they were asked to do by the adults; many felt free to shout and swear at other children and staff. The volatility seen in the classroom was even worse outside. Many pupils struggled to play together, argued furiously and hit each other with little incitement. And while half the school were turning their anger outwards, the other half turned in on themselves: the anxiety of living in chaos day after day always has an effect. This environment had taken its toll on everyone. Children’s behaviour was truly awful, parents were angry and teachers were exhausted and demoralised.

The overriding message that came across to me was that it could not be any different – that change was not possible. Covid-19 had compounded the problems that already existed. You could see why people thought this way: enough people had come and gone, attempting to make change. It had failed as a local authority school and it had failed as part of an academy trust. All that change had done was reinforce the notion that it was, and always would be, a hopeless case.

In my early days at the school, a parent put it succinctly for me: "Well, it’s The Coppice init!", as if that explained everything. "The Coppice" was shorthand for failure. And that is the baggage that our pupils grow up with. That is its reputation.

The overriding message that came across to me was that it couldn’t be any different – that change was not possible. Covid-19 had compounded the problems that already existed

But this is a positive story, and the school is finally changing for the better. A lot of that positive change is to do with reading. In my first year, we focused on two things only: behaviour and reading. Behaviour, but not in the way that you might think because poor behaviour was not the cause of the school’s troubles but a symptom of them. We dug a little deeper into the children’s life experiences. A third of our children had experienced domestic violence; 20% of children lived with a parent involved with drug abuse; 13% had a family member in prison and 10% lived with a parent with significant mental health problems. Most of the children had experienced significant and traumatic events in their lives. From that concentration of trauma, compounded by the austerity years and the isolation caused by Covid-19, came a whole tidal wave of frustration and anger on the estates and in the school.

So, we dealt with the behaviour, teaching pupils how to deal with their anger in a different way. At the same time, though, we focused most of our resources on getting our children to read. We knew the behaviour problems were often caused because pupils couldn’t access learning simply because they could not read. We knew that success in reading was key to positive change.

In 2022, phonics results were 30%; two years later, they were 74%. In 2022, 30% of children left the school being able to read at an age-related level; two years later, it was 55%. In November 2024, Ofsted returned, and Birchen Coppice Primary Academy was able to leave its "special measures" label behind. In fact, it was judged "Good" in four out of five areas, recognising that "the school makes sure that teaching pupils to read is central to the curriculum. Pupils enjoy reading. They understand that reading is important and do so every day".

Making reading central to everything we do at Birchen Coppice has brought about significant change. This change shows in our pupils’ ability to access their lessons as well as their positive attitudes to learning. We see it in our pupils’ positive behaviour.

Teaching our pupils to read is the most important thing we can do for them. I think we’ll only really see the impact of this in years to come when our primary pupils become secondary pupils and then adults. The Birchen Coppice story is a long way from finished.

Sandra Pennington is speaking at the Bookseller’s Children’s Conference on 29th September. Buy tickets here.