'Closing the Reading Gap' with Alex Quigley and 'Courage in The Classroom' with Dr Catherine Lee

<p>This week we are treating you the listeners to another bumper double edition. We are delighted to have interviews with the authors of 2 new education books , namely <strong>Alex Quigley</strong> and <strong>Dr Catherine Lee</strong> . Alex is interviewed by <strong>Bernie Kaye</strong>, a fantastic new addition to our NN team , Bernie is an English teaching uber geek with a passion for cooking, reading and festival going. AHT - ITT, research &amp; literacy. We have all our usual features including &nbsp;our <em>TDT section</em> <a href="http://tdtrust.org/">http://tdtrust.org/</a>and <em>Lockdown Learning.&nbsp;</em></p> <p><em><strong>About Alex</strong></em></p> <p>I am National Content Manager at the EEF, supporting teachers to access research evidence. After over fifteen years in the classroom, I now support from outside the school gates.</p> <p><em><strong>Closing the reading gap&nbsp;</strong></em></p> <p>So, what is the reading gap? It is a teacher knowledge gap, but more importantly, it is the gap that exists between reading access, reading practice and reading ability for the pupils in our schools. It marks out the ‘reading rich’ and the ‘reading poor’ populate all of our schools.</p> <p>The gap is writ large when we explore the evidence. Take reading access. Recent research from the National Literacy Trust shows that 1 in 11 children own a book of their own. A mere 1 in 8 disadvantaged children own a book. I think about the impact of those empty bookshelves (in all likelihood, there is no bookshelf at all) for pupils.</p> <p>Then when you explore school attainment, you can see the gap and the daily damage that is suffered by many pupils. When you consider that only 73% of pupils leaving primary school reached the expected level for reading in 2019, it is clear that many of those pupils will struggle to access the secondary school curriculum.</p> <p>I never expected two years ago that this book would be published during a global crisis that would see pupils impacted by school closures. When you wed cl