About English Hubs

In October 2018, the Department for Education launched 34 English Hubs at primary schools across England. Each hub was chosen for its track record in excellent phonics and reading teaching.
Hub schools were selected on the following criteria:

• 90%+ of children reached the expected standard in the phonics screening check over the 3 years preceding 2018;
• Ofsted rating of Good or Outstanding, with an ‘effectiveness in leadership and management’ rating of at least Good;
• Consistently high EYFS Good Level of Development (GLD);
• Consistently high KS1/2 attainment; and 
• Capacity to support other schools.

The English Hub programme enables Hub schools to work towards increasing reading standards in schools in their region and improve the educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged children.

These Hub schools have been charged with offering funding and free support that focusses on the following three areas:

Early language development: 

• Providing evidence-based approaches to early language development;
• Closing the word gap in school-based early years settings; including
• Appropriate use of formative assessments in relation to phonics / early reading. 

Age-appropriate phonics provision:

Encouraging best practice in systematic synthetic phonics teaching from school-based early years provision to the end of Key Stage 1, and as the primary reading strategy throughout the school. This includes:

• Encouraging fidelity to a single systematic synthetic phonics programme;
• Supporting the effective use of decodable books in the early stages of learning to read, as a way of establishing phonic decoding; and
• Supporting effective practice in formative assessment in relation to phonics/early reading.

Promoting a love of reading:

• Encouraging reading for enjoyment;
• Supporting whole school reading approaches;
• Reading to children at least once a day and encouraging reading at home; 
• Ensuring that reading and language is embedded across the curriculum and is taught in a purposeful way;
• Children are confident presenting their work and using different types of texts to achieve their goals;
• Developing teachers’ knowledge of appropriate children’s literature; and
• Developing reflective practitioners who can talk confidently about books and use this creativity in their own work.