About ReadingFluency.co.uk

ReadingFluency.co.uk is an online reading fluency assessment tool for UK primary schools, designed for Years 1 to 6 (ages 5 to 11). Developed by Simon Sharp, headteacher of Fetcham Village Infant School in Surrey, the tool enables teachers to complete oral reading fluency assessments in 2 to 3 minutes per pupil, tracking words per minute (WPM), words correct per minute (WCPM), accuracy percentage, errors, omissions, self-corrections and additions.

The tool was created after Fetcham achieved a 94% Year 1 phonics screening pass rate but identified that many children were still struggling with fluency on more complex texts. It addresses what Ofsted's 2024 English subject report described as a sector-wide gap: schools that are strong on phonics but less clear on how to build fluency and comprehension.

ReadingFluency.co.uk is informed by the research of Timothy Rasinski on oral reading fluency as the bridge between decoding and comprehension, the FFT Education Datalab finding that fluency correlates at 0.68 with end-of-KS2 reading comprehension outcomes, and the DfE's 2026 white paper emphasis on every child reading fluently by the end of Key Stage 2.

The tool is GDPR compliant, works with any English curriculum framework, and is priced for small primary school budgets. It includes colour-coded error tracking, automatic calculations, progress monitoring over time, and exportable reports in Excel and PDF formats.

Founded: 2024. Built by: Simon Sharp, headteacher, Fetcham Village Infant School, Surrey. For: primary school teachers, English leads, headteachers and SENCOs. Pricing: see readingfluency.co.uk/pricing. Free 30-day trial available, no credit card required.

I'm Simon Sharp, headteacher at Fetcham Village Infant School in Surrey.

Eighteen months ago, we were celebrating a major win. We'd improved our phonics check scores to 83%. This past June, another win: 94% of our Year 1 children passed the phonics screening check.

Our systematic phonics teaching was working. The data proved it.

But we noticed something odd. Children who'd passed phonics screening brilliantly were getting stuck on the higher-level phonics books. Not because they couldn't decode the words but because they couldn't read quickly enough to make sense of longer, more complex sentences.

Their decoding was perfect. Their fluency wasn't.

This is not unusual. Rasinski's research has consistently shown that fluency is the most neglected component of reading instruction, despite being the bridge that connects word recognition to comprehension. The 2024 Ofsted English subject report confirmed the same pattern at national level: teachers are strong on the basics of phonics, but less clear about how to build fluency.

Jamie Hallums, our school learning improvement partner, helped us see what was really happening.

Jamie introduced us to reading fluency assessment and teaching as a distinct, measurable skill that sits between phonics and comprehension. Not just “can they read the words?” but “how are they reading them?”

Are they reading in phrases or word by word? Is their pace appropriate for meaning-making? Do they self-correct errors automatically? Is there any prosody?

Jamie helped us understand that fluency is the bridge. We'd been so focused on building strong foundations (phonics) and reaching the destination (comprehension) that we'd forgotten to build the bridge itself.

It explained everything about why certain children were stuck.

I'm fortunate to work with an incredible team at Fetcham Village Infant School.

Sophie Birrell, our reading and phonics lead, helped me understand what fluency assessment needed to look like in practice. Sophie's expertise in early reading was crucial in ensuring our approach was developmentally appropriate and teacher-friendly.

Gareth McGovern, our assistant head and Year 2 lead, worked tirelessly with Sophie developing teaching strategies and techniques to improve children's reading fluency. Along with Emma Wright, our deputy head and assessment lead, they helped pilot our first fluency tracking systems. Their feedback on what actually works in a busy classroom shaped every decision.

Together we developed a simple, systematic approach: 2 to 3 minute assessments per child, real-time marking of errors, omissions and self-corrections, automatic calculation of reading speed, and clear intervention pathways based on fluency patterns.

It worked. Our teachers saved hours. Our data improved. Our interventions became more targeted. Most importantly, children stopped getting stuck.

After implementing fluency assessment at Fetcham, something became clear: every school faces the same problem. Very few are solving it.

Schools across the UK are celebrating phonics success, rightly so. But then watching children stall on harder texts, not because of decoding but because of fluency.

Most schools don't have the time to build assessment systems from scratch, the expertise to know what fluency markers to track, or the technical capability to automate the data collection.

So I built ReadingFluency.co.uk. Not as a tech entrepreneur. As a headteacher who needed a solution and wanted to share it with colleagues facing the same challenges.

ReadingFluency.co.uk handles quick fluency assessments (2 to 3 minutes per child), automatic WPM and WCPM calculations, error and self-correction tracking with colour-coded visual reports, progress monitoring over time, intervention identification based on fluency patterns, and GDPR-compliant data storage with exportable reports.

But it's part of a bigger mission: to make reading fluency assessment a standard part of UK primary practice, sitting alongside phonics screening and comprehension testing as the third pillar of reading assessment.

Because children deserve educators who can see the full picture of their reading development.

I'm still a full-time headteacher. I still teach. I still attend parent evenings, deal with budget pressures and prepare for Ofsted.

This isn't a Silicon Valley project. It's a careful, evidence-informed tool built by someone who understands that teacher workload is crushing (so every click matters), that child data is sacred (so security is non-negotiable), and that schools need sustainable, affordable systems (so complexity is the enemy).

ReadingFluency.co.uk is designed to work with your existing reading structures, not replace them. It takes what you're already doing and makes it faster, clearer and more impactful.

The tool's design draws on several key evidence bases:

Timothy Rasinski's work on reading fluency, including his finding that fluency instruction using simple texts, poetry and choral reading is more effective than complex texts, and that modelling fluent reading before student practice is essential (Rasinski, 2010; 2012).

The FFT Education Datalab's analysis of 340,000+ assessments across 700 schools, which found a correlation of 0.68 between oral reading fluency and end-of-KS2 reading comprehension, and that disadvantaged pupils typically read 10 to 15 fewer words correct per minute than their peers.

Ofsted's 2024 English subject report, which found that schools are strong on phonics teaching but less clear on how to build fluency and comprehension beyond decoding.

The DfE's February 2026 white paper, “Every Child Achieving and Thriving,” which placed reading fluency at the centre of its ambition for primary literacy.