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“Every teacher is a teacher of English” is easy to say. Turning it into consistent classroom practice is much harder.

Geoff Barton talks to Jennie Shearer, Literacy Lead at The Cavendish School in Eastbourne, about making literacy a genuine whole-school responsibility. Jennie explains why secondary literacy goes beyond phonics, fluency and reading ages: students also need to understand, question and enjoy texts, while learning to read, write, speak and listen like historians, scientists, geographers and artists.

They discuss how middle leaders and subject specialists can embed disciplinary literacy, why assessment data should open questions rather than close them, and how reading supports wellbeing as well as attainment. Jennie also shares how she redesigned the school library around “social reading”, using current-affairs articles to generate purposeful talk. The result is a lively account of student agency, intellectual challenge and the joy that can emerge when reading becomes something young people do together.

In this episode

- Why secondary literacy must go beyond the basics

- Creating collective ownership across departments

- What disciplinary literacy looks like in practice

- Supporting students to read and communicate within each subject

- Using assessment diagnostically, not just as a headline reading age

- Turning a quiet library into a space for social reading

- The relationship between reading, oracy and student agency

- Learning to disagree well — and to change your mind

About the guest

Jennie Shearer is Literacy Lead at The Cavendish School, an all-through school in Eastbourne. A teacher and experienced literacy leader, she focuses particularly on embedding literacy across the secondary curriculum and supporting subject teams to develop their own disciplinary practice.