Can psychology change the world?

Tommy MacKay

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Thus the West Dunbartonshire Literacy Initiative was born, and just over a decade (and three tons of data) later we have completed what may be the largest, longest and most ambitious literacy project in the world. Our total research sample was 63,563 children and young people, over 33,000 of whom were assessed individually. The full research document is available in book form (MacKay, 2006), and an overview of the final results is published in Achieving the Vision (MacKay, 2007), an electronic copy of which is freely available (see references). We carried out five separate studies.

The main study

This was a cross-lagged cohort study over 10 years in all 35 primary schools and 23 nurseries. The aim was not only to raise the reading attainment of all children but to reduce the numbers who would experience reading failure through a multiple-strategy early intervention. Our programme was based on 10 ‘key strands’ (see box).
The changes in achievement levels were dramatic. From a welter of statistics perhaps the simplest way to present the results is to say that the children with ‘very low scores’ for word reading on our specially designed baseline test (MacKay, 1999a) fell from 11 per cent in 1997 to 0.5 per cent in 2007, while those with ‘very high scores’ rose from 5 per cent to almost 50 per cent. In short, the intervention totally transformed the landscape of reading attainment in the early years.

The synthetic phonics study

This was a quasi-experimental study in 18 primary schools. It compared the effectiveness of two methods of teaching the basic building blocks of literacy – traditional or ‘analytic’ phonics (the approach normally used in teaching reading, beginning at whole-word level and breaking words down into letter sounds) and ‘synthetic’ phonics (starting with letter sounds and learning how to combine these to make words). While good phonics teaching using any approach is fundamental to teaching basic literacy, the results in the nine primaries using the synthetic approach were not only significantly higher but had lasting impact at follow-up three years later. As a result, all of the schools in the authority gradually opted for the synthetic method.

The attitudes study

This was a long-term follow-up to a randomised controlled trial I carried out with children aged about nine years (MacKay, 1999b). They were all heading for illiteracy, with an average reading age under six years. The intervention had consisted of neither curricular change nor additional support, but only of changing attitudes towards the value of reading. At the time, the experimentals made significant reading gains. We traced all but two of these young people almost six years later in their various secondary schools and found that the experimentals, despite no further intervention following the first study, were still reading more than a year ahead of the controls. Another interesting factor emerged. The controls were clearly also reading at a higher level than expected. This fits with an observation made in the full report on the original RCT – ‘children became excited about print’ (MacKay, 1995, p.21). The project was infectious, so there were spin-off benefits for the controls too.

The declaration study

The experimental part of this study was carried out in East Renfrewshire. The sample was 565 children in eight primaries and four nurseries. I was asked to do a study on literacy and expectations, the only condition being that it must be completely new and quite different from what anyone had ever done before. I still remember the scepticism that greeted me from a large gathering of educational directorate, head teachers and class teachers when I told them: ‘We want to raise children’s reading levels by doing nothing different from what we are already doing – except getting them to declare that they will do it.’
The idea was simple to the point of naivety. All the children had to do every day was to make bold declarations about their future levels of reading achievement. It could be done individually or in groups or as whole-class chants. Listening to 60 children in nursery chanting joyfully their own declaration – ‘Reading is fun, reading is cool, we’ll all be great wee readers because we’re going to school!’ – can be a powerful experience. It was the results, however, that were impressive. After one term the experimentals showed not only gains in key early literacy skills, but also positive changes in their attitudes to reading and their own beliefs about whether they would become good readers.