Best Practice

Literacy in the post-16 classroom: Five golden rules

Post-16 Literacy Quality First Teaching Pedagogy Lesson planning
It can be easy to forget literacy when we enter the post-16 classroom, but this would be a mistake. Erin Miller considers five golden rules for reinforcing literacy skills post-16.
Image: Adobe Stock

In a blogpost on the Sixth Form Colleges Association website, PhD researcher Rose Veitch (2023) stated that “subject-literacy is inseparable from subject content knowledge”.

I believe that most post-16 teachers would be inclined to agree. In post-16 education, teachers are challenged with how to develop subject literacy skills at the same time as subject content becomes significantly more challenging.

Among other literacy-related challenges, students in post-16 education are expected to engage with more difficult texts, adopt new vocabulary (including for subjects never previously studied), and produce greater volumes of writing in examinations.

While the transition from secondary to post-16 demands an increase in the literacy capabilities of students, the emphasis on literacy in post-16 lessons is generally less pronounced than it is in secondary schools.

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