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Does it matter that we focus so much more on reading than writing? Much has been said over the past 15 years about reading as a key component of literacy teaching. From National Literacy Strategies to the EEF literacy guidance report (also not focused specifically on writing) from 2021, reading sat centre stage with writing a side show. But there has been a flurry of publications recently, starting in 2019 with a systematic review specifically on writing approaches from EEF, which slowly fed through into policy through Ofsted’s Writing Practice Review (2024), and the recent DfE Writing framework (2025). There is, finally, more policy recognition that writing is a major component of literacy teaching. But even now we risk underestimating its significance to pupils and the opportunities it presents to teachers and schools for tackling disadvantages.
Our recent project funded by EEF to trial Response To Intervention as a springboard for identifying and overcoming obstacles to progress in writing at Key Stage 2, unlocked new ways of positioning writing as an enjoyable passport to learning. The full report of what we learned will be released once EEF have approved it for publication. In the meantime, we want to share our reflections about the obstacles to progress in writing that teachers, leaders and LSAs discovered with us. We also want to shine a light on the strategies that colleagues and pupils used, very successfully, to overcome them.
Barriers to progress in writing
The first thing we observed is that teaching writing is, even for primary school teachers with well over 5 years of experience, significantly less front and centre than teaching reading. This is understandable. Writing has suffered from a lack of focus in central policymaking until recently, and a related deficit in focus in research, in initial teacher education and in ongoing CPDL (Continuing Professional Development and Learning).
This meant that teachers were working with fewer tools and support mechanisms when planning teaching activities focused on writing. This might also well reflect a bigger issue – we have a culture that tends to emphasise reading. France, by contrast, approaches writing as the gateway to citizenship and teaches reading through writing, not the other way around. So teachers who wanted to focus on writing were cutting across the stream of attention.
Secondly, teaching writing is a much more integrated process than teaching reading. Assessing all the different, dynamically interacting aspects of writing at the same time required more complex engagement with pupils’ learning and literacy from teachers than checking accuracy & understanding or speed of reading. So, teaching writing stresses teachers’ literacy and pedagogical knowledge and expertise much more profoundly.
This has implications for the professional learning and curriculum development support they need to do it well. One great was that spending time assessing writing in real depth to identify obstacles to progress in triads of classroom teachers, LSAs (Learning Support Assistants) and leaders opened up everyone’s thinking. Each member of the trio could both contribute and learn and the reservoir of deeper knowledge about pupils’ identifies and experiences which LSAs had access to, in a way that proved transformative.
Teaching writing also carries imposes a greater psychological burden than the teaching of reading for many teachers; writing is certainly, as it is further beyond teachers’ normal day-to-day activities and experience than reading. So, they are out of their comfort zone, and as a result can often transmit their unfamiliarity and lack of comfort with it as an activity to their learners, compounding barriers the learners themselves experience.
Finally, pupils can find writing more challenging because of its complexity. Writing emerges from a synthesis of physical capacity/dexterity (especially for handwriting but also for typing), technical skills such as SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar), and personal expression and identity. So persistent critique and revision for learners is emotionally demanding.
Key considerations to unlock writing teaching
Our work on the teaching of writing, using a tried-and-tested approach, enabled us and participating schools to explore these barriers in depth, and work with teachers on responding to them. After collecting feedback from the colleagues who took part and using those to inform our own reflections, we have identified the following questions about key things to explore when focusing on improving the quality of writing teaching.
Investing in the problem
Are we starting with a deep enough exploration of the obstacles to learning through and in writing? In this programme providing colleagues with the time and capacity to really focus in on obstacles and ways of overcoming them was pivotal. Because writing posed challenges for teachers in terms of their literacy skills and their professional and even psychological starting points providing teachers with tools and materials which could scaffold identifying learning gaps and building lesson plans to respond to them proved invaluable in breaking the problems down into manageable chunks.
Linking writing with individuality
Are we applying what we know about formative assessment for pupils to the development of writing? Our approach involved a lot of formative assessment, both to identify obstacles very specifically and to monitor how pupils were responding to teaching designed to address them. This process helped teachers understand exactly what they needed to explore, including for their own professional knowledge. But it also involved a focus on who the learners were as people, which helped address emotional challenges felt by both teachers and by pupils. Understanding learners’ unique viewpoints was powerful both for zeroing in on the barriers to they faced, and for helping them feel able to make progress.
Working with support staff
Are we mobilising all the possible information we have about learners facing obstacles? Where support staff, such as TAs and LSAs, were in a position to contribute and participate in the writing programme important information, including which pupils might have been skilled at hiding (in one case this was the fact that a pupil who seemed very able in discussion and in a keyboard was simply not strong enough to sit properly to write) came to the surface . Our participating support colleagues, individually and collectively were able to identify both challenges and strengths that teachers, who have to focus on the class as a whole, can struggle to have time to drill into. This, coupled with research based technical strategies seemed to us to be linked with creating an environment where pupils were asking for more time to practice their writing and to write more about what interested them. So we are wondering whether building an approach to writing which prioritises young people’s identities and personal learning journeys, linked with high quality resources, may be the key to helping teachers achieve big writing gains, whatever their own status as writers is.
Thinking about what this means for schools
Based on what we have observed, we think the following questions are good prompts to begin to explore writing in your own context:
- What guidance would you want to have available to support writing in your school?
- What approaches or tools do you have in place to diagnose barriers to progress in writing for teachers? And/or for pupils?
- Are you able to bring support staff more closely together with teachers to understand progress learners could make?
- How do you ensure that teaching in literacy (and especially writing) is linked to an understanding of individual learners’ identity? What could you do to expand on this?