“Are you DfE validated?”
I get asked this almost every week. By SENCos, by heads, by trust leaders who genuinely want to do right by their young people. And I completely understand why. When you’re spending precious budget on an intervention, you want to know it’s the real deal.
So here’s my honest answer. No, Read Revive isn’t on the DfE’s validated list. And no new programme can be, because that door closed a while ago.
But I want to explain why I think, for older readers, it’s the wrong question to be asking.
The list is a photograph, not a live feed
Back in April 2021, the DfE published criteria for phonics programmes and invited publishers to apply. After three rounds, 45 programmes were validated. And then it stopped. The DfE’s own page now says the information “remains available for reference”. There’s no way in for anyone new, however good their work is.
Validation itself meant this: a publisher assessed their own programme, then a small panel of experts checked it against the criteria. It was a judgement made on paper, at that moment in time.
A lot can happen in five years. Programmes get rewritten. Publishers get bought and sold. Training teams grow or shrink. Support for schools gets better, or it doesn’t. As far as I can find, there’s no published process for regularly re-checking the programmes already on that list. So the badge tells you about 2021. It can’t tell you what your school will get in 2026.
I want to be really clear here. I’m not saying the programmes on the list are bad. Lots of them are brilliant, and I have huge respect for the people behind them. I’m saying a badge on its own isn’t enough to go on.
It was never built for our young people
This is the bit that really matters to me. Validation was designed for early reading: complete programmes that teach little ones to read from scratch in Reception and Key Stage 1, getting them ready for the Year 1 phonics screening check.
Now picture the young people I work with. A 14-year-old who’s sat through years of phonics that never stuck. Who’s become an expert at hiding it. Who’d rather be sent out of class than be asked to read aloud. Who has quietly, heartbreakingly, decided that reading just isn’t for people like them.
They need exactly the same rigorous, systematic teaching of the code. But put a book about a cat on a mat in front of them and you’ve lost them before you’ve even started.
Asking a programme built for teenagers to fit the validation mould is like asking a lorry to pass a moped test. The lorry is perfectly roadworthy. It’s just built for a different road.
And remember, validation was never compulsory. The DfE simply says phonics teaching should be rigorous and systematic. That’s the bar, and it’s one we hold ourselves to every single day.
What the evidence actually tells us
This is the part that surprised me most when I first dug into it. In 2022, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) published an independent trial across more than 130 primary schools. A validated programme led to around one month’s extra reading progress over two years.
The same trial looked at a well-known phonics catch-up programme for pupils in Years 5 to 8. On average, those pupils made the equivalent of two months’ less reading progress than pupils in other schools. The EEF were careful to say the results should be treated with caution, because many schools didn’t deliver the programme fully. But it tells us something important: what works for five-year-olds doesn’t automatically work for teenagers.
The EEF’s own chief executive said more research is needed into phonics for older pupils. I couldn’t agree more. It’s one of the reasons we built progress tracking into Read Revive from day one. I don’t want anyone taking our word for it. I want them to see it.
The questions I’d ask instead
If you’re choosing an intervention for older readers, whether it’s ours or anyone else’s, these are the questions I’d want answered:
- Who was it built for? Older learners from the start, or an early years programme with a new cover?
- Would a 14-year-old be embarrassed to be seen with it? Look at the books, the pictures and the language.
- Is it genuinely systematic? A clear, cumulative sequence, with decodable texts that match it.
- How will you know it’s working? Can you see each learner’s progress, and exactly where they’re stuck?
- What support will your staff get now? Not five years ago. Now.
- Can you talk to a school using it today? A recent reference beats a historic badge every time.
Why I care so much about this
Read Revive exists because I got tired of watching brilliant young people be failed by resources that were never made for them.
It’s systematic synthetic phonics, built on the same principles that sit behind the DfE’s criteria, and it supports the DfE’s Reading Framework, which recognises that older pupils who are still struggling need extra help. But everything about it, from the texts to the language to the way it looks, is built for teenagers and young adults. We even call tricky words “Wild Words”, because they just haven’t been tamed yet. Their dignity sits at the heart of all of it.
At the end of the day, the proof isn’t a stamp from 2021. It’s a 15-year-old who’d given up on reading picking up a book and reading it. Out loud. Proudly. That’s what I care about, and that’s what I’ll always measure us by.
If you’re a school leader, SENCo or AP lead thinking about your older readers, I’d genuinely love to talk. You can book a call with us here.
Georgia Co-director, Read Revive