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A national Year 8 reading assessment
The DfE announced a statutory Year 8 reading assessment in October 2025 and confirmed it in November 2025 and February 2026. As of October 2026, its start date and format have not been published.
On 15 October 2025 the Department for Education announced a reading test for all children at age 13. The education secretary at the time, Bridget Phillipson, said the government would “introduce a statutory assessment in year 8 to assess reading fluency and comprehension”. Three weeks later, on 5 November 2025, its response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review confirmed: “We will therefore introduce a new statutory reading test for all children to be taken in Year 8, designed to check both fluency and comprehension.” The schools white paper of February 2026, Every child achieving and thriving, repeated the commitment.
The review had proposed something different: “diagnostic Maths and English tests to be taken in Year 8”. The government chose a statutory test of reading only. For writing and maths, it said it expects every school to assess progress in Year 8 and will support schools to choose suitable assessments.
What is confirmed
- It will be statutory, and every Year 8 student will take it.
- It will check reading fluency and comprehension.
- The DfE’s announcement says: “Data from the new statutory assessment will be made available to Ofsted and government, but individual schools’ results will not be published – as with the phonics check. Schools will make children’s results available to parents.”
- The government response adds that schools will get their own students’ results, with national, regional and local authority figures to compare against.
What is not confirmed
- The start date. In September 2025, before the announcement, Schools Week reported that the government hoped to introduce the test from the 2028 to 2029 academic year and that plans were still being finalised. The white paper gives no date.
- The format. In the same report, Schools Week said officials had not decided between on-screen and paper, and that the test would be externally marked.
What it means for English departments
Reading at Key Stage 3 becomes something the DfE and Ofsted can see in national data, and each school will see how its own students compare with national, regional and local authority figures. The test checks fluency as well as comprehension, so a school’s reading assessment in Years 7 and 8 is worth checking against both now.
If the test does start in 2028 to 2029, the first students to sit it are in Year 6 in 2026 to 2027. For support in the meantime, the white paper points to the DfE’s “new ‘Unlocking Reading’ CPD for secondary schools launched in January 2026”.
What happens next
As of 5 October 2026, nothing is dated. The DfE has not published a start date or a format for the test. The wider curriculum changes it sits alongside are covered in What the Curriculum and Assessment Review said about English.
Sources
- Department for Education, Focus on reading in secondary years to drive up standards (15 October 2025)
- Department for Education, Government response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review (November 2025)
- Curriculum and Assessment Review, Building a world-class curriculum for all: final report (November 2025)
- Department for Education, Every child achieving and thriving (February 2026)
- Schools Week, Year 8s to sit mandatory reading test under white paper plans (25 September 2025)