Our History

The programme was originally developed at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore by Dr Robert Slavin. In 1997, the Centre for Teacher and School Development, led by Professor David Hopkins and Dr Alma Harris, at the University of Nottingham began working with the 'new' Nottingham City LEA to develop a small pilot scheme for the adaptation of Success for All to English schools. At this time the programme was launched in five primary schools in the Meadows area of the inner city. After just one year, there was evidence of pupils making considerable progress in reading levels - in some cases, this was as much as one year's progress in one term.

In 1998, two schools in Derbyshire joined the pilot study and by 1999, Success for All-UK had become a limited company and also a registered charity. In 2000, Bransholme EAZ in Hull funded four schools to adopt the project; Islington EAZ funded a further two schools and Tower Hamlets LEA another two. The intervening years have been spent 'anglicising' the programme - in particular, tailoring it to fit the demands of the NLS.

Currently, we are working with approximately 90 different schools across the UK, in collaboration with twelve EAZs/LEAs, from Leeds and Hull in the North of England to Tilbury and Bromley in the South. These are all in areas of high social deprivation with all the challenges and limitations of aspiration and achievement associated with this. In all schools, the programme has made an impact on the percentage of children achieving age-appropriate National Curriculum levels.

We now have 5 main parts to the programme, all of which can be adopted as a whole school approach or implemented separately depending on the needs of the school.

Foundation Stage - We now have two new foundation stage programmes which provide young children with an experimental and child-central curriculum that gives them the necessary foundation for success in KS1. Curiosity Corner in Nursery and Kinder Corner in Reception have an integrated approach and have been written to meet all the requirements of the Foundation Stage and Early Learning goals. These consist ot 36 weekly thematic units in Curiosity and 16 two-week thematic units in Kinder.

KS1 - The SFA Roots Programme in year 1 gives children the building blocks to become successful readers and writers. Using a systematic, synthetic phonics programme, which has been endorsed by the Rose Review, children gain confidence in their ability to apply their knowledge to the reading process.

KS2 - The SFA Wings Programme exposes children to carefully selected literature covering all the different genres to develop their skills as effective readers and writers. The aim of the Wings programme is that by the end of year 6 children have a love of reading and are able to question and clarify their understanding of any text.

Year 6 Literacy Skills Consolidation Package - This programme has been developed over the last three years to consolidate and extend children's prior learning enabling them to demonstrate their skills during national testing. The Year Six Teaching Package consists of ten units that covers five important text genres, develops children's ability to articulate their thinking about text and focuses on key literacy, presentational and functional devices. The package also includes detailed guidance on teaching five genres of writing (recount, non-chronological report, persuasion, balanced report and story).

KS3 Reading Project - This is Success for All's latest development project and has been made possible through a grant from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.
Secondary schools have approached us as they have wanted to implement the strategies used in the primary programme in KS3.
We are at present writing materials which meet the interest levels of children in KS3 both at the lower level and extension materials in NC level 6.