Literacy

These pages detail assessments that can be used to assess and monitor deaf children’s literacy skills. These assessments and information should be used alongside Key principles and effective practice.

Historically, deaf children have achieved poor outcomes in both reading and writing, which has negatively affected their educational achievements. Government data continues to show that deaf children are lagging behind hearing peers. It is therefore important that the literacy skills of deaf children are compared with their hearing peers, and that tests are used which are standardised on a wide group of hearing children, rather than just on deaf children. This is essential in order to assess where a child’s difficulties lie, and to give them appropriate support to close the attainment gap. 

Assessments have traditionally looked at reading attainment but there is an increased interest in looking at writing attainment, too. When assessing both areas, assessments should highlight areas of strength and weakness in order to assist planning for the child’s development.

Assessments which give a global reading-age score, and look at different areas of skill such as vocabulary, grammar and inference skills, are the most useful. Global scores alone don’t provide enough information to assist the planning of the child’s educational programme.

To view reading assessments, click here.

To view writing assessments, click here.