About Us

– David Morgan

The story of the Trainertext Library and All Aboard Learning starts in a little windowless room, with gloss grey walls and an antiseptic smell. I can’t leave the room, because I am somewhere deep inside Wandsworth Prison, in south London.

It is June 1999. I am at the end of a routine discussion with Mike, one of the prison officers we had been collaborating with. So, happily, I will be free to leave the building in a few minutes.

Mike is a prison officer heading for retirement. He is still as hard as nails and has a simple wisdom born of experience.

“You know David, I was against this project from the start. But my view has changed now. It’s amazing to see the inmates learning to read and the impact on them. I don’t mind saying that it has brought a tear to my eye on occasions. And we love it because it transforms them as people, which is good for us too. But what we are seeing means there’s a problem, doesn’t it?”

“Okay, sure. What problem is that, Mike?”

“Well if these inmates are learning to read here on a prison wing in just a few months, it means our teachers must be working with the wrong resources, doesn’t it? Otherwise the guys would have learned to read first time around. So, if you want to have real impact, it seems to me that is where to look. You need to create the resources that the teachers really need.”

Listening to Mike, I know he must be right. Clearly the resources and training being given to the teachers is not working for a lot of the students. I know that 25-40% of the students are not learning to read, depending on the methodology being used. But really… changing that is a bit beyond my scope! So I just get on with life.

But as an engineer, the question is interesting and intriguing. How can we make learning to read easier for every child? I struggled to read through my entire childhood, so I have some sense of the impacts it can have. Then, as an adult it changed for me, just like we are seeing with the prison inmates.

It feels a bit crazy, but with the dawn of the new millennium, I start researching the neurology of learning and of learning to read. The mechanics of the brain are utterly fascinating, so I give myself a basic education in neurology, just by reading the undergraduate textbooks.

Then I start testing some new approaches. In the end I stumble on the idea of trainertext. Testing trainertext in our local Oxford schools proves that it clearly can help the children. So I keep developing resources and in 2008 I feel we have a system that we can launch as a solution.

But, like so many people before me, I find that our shiny new idea doesn’t work! Or, at least, not as well as hoped. It transforms reading for some children. They go from guessing lots of words to reading everything accurately in a matter of weeks. But it doesn’t work for a lot of other children, who are also struggling to read and still can’t progress. Worse still, we have no idea why.

Mike’s mission of a better solution for everyone is not being accomplished. I have failed, because I know every reading system seems to help some but not others. Our new Easyread System is just the same.

Then we stumble on another breakthrough. We find that well over half of the children who are still struggling have a visual issue. They can read big text, but not small or medium sized text. This was despite having had an eye test.

We still have no idea why, but more research into the neurology of the visual system throws up two potential issues:

1 – A weak cerebellum
2 – A weak magnocellular system

So we start testing new ways to overcome those barriers too. And they work.

For instance, if the children with a weak cerebellum follow our simple Eye Tracking Exercise Protocol, their eye control improves in a matter of days. Suddenly they can now access smaller text despite years of frustration. Hallelujah!

But… still more problems are evident for other learners. So, in the same way, we keep digging to find out what’s causing each of them. Case by case, we develop a simple protocol to overcome the problem we find.

We now have nine different possible barriers to reading to track. It is only if a learner has no barriers to reading that they can read. In our Baseline Analytical Reading Test we often discover four or five possible problems. Each has to be resolved for success to be possible.

That is why we find that you need the right resources and the right expert help to be sure of success every time. I would love to have created a sausage machine solution, but as every teacher can tell you, education is just not that simple.

But, given the importance to someone’s life and the potential impacts on society too, isn’t it always worth it? We need to do whatever is necessary to get each child reading. The price of failure is too high to ignore.

So, we have now developed the All Aboard Phonics system for the early years and Reading Copilot for reading interventions. Both systems are based around using trainertext for reading practice, with a technical understanding of what other barriers might arise for individual students. It is that combination of tools, training and support that allows us to expect to see every student reading proficiently and confidently.

In our experience, if someone can speak the language, they can learn to read it too.