What is the Laidlaw Schools Trust transition programme, and how does it use reading assessment to support students moving from primary to secondary school?
Laidlaw Schools Trust runs a year 6 to year 7 transition programme that places the NGRT — the New Group Reading Test — at its core as an early diagnostic tool. NGRT reading support pathway profiles are used across all of the trust's schools to surface hidden reading gaps before students ever set foot in their new secondary classroom, ensuring that every child is placed on the right pathway from the very start of their secondary education.
The timing of the assessment is deliberate and strategic. The NGRT is administered to year 6 pupils over a three-week window in May and June, which means all diagnostic data is available by mid-June — well ahead of the September secondary school start. This early window gives teachers genuine lead time to act on what the data reveals, rather than waiting for problems to become visible in the classroom. As Talia Caralambos describes it in the episode, the trust's ambition is to uncover gaps that might otherwise go unnoticed — particularly in a context where some of Laidlaw's schools serve communities with extremely high linguistic diversity, including one school in the West End of Newcastle where over 60 languages are spoken by its pupils.
The NGRT data also works alongside cognitive ability data — specifically the CAT4, or Cognitive Ability Test 4 — to identify meaningful discrepancies between a student's reading attainment and their underlying cognitive profile. A student reading below what their cognitive profile would predict is a student whose gap may never have been formally caught before transition. The programme's explicit goal is to catch those students early and route them to the right support from day one. You can explore the full episode on Listenly's Education: Joining the Dots page.
What is the NGRT?
The NGRT (New Group Reading Test) is a standardised reading assessment published by GL Assessment. Within Laidlaw Schools Trust's transition programme, it is administered as a group diagnostic during year 6 — generating pathway profiles that guide secondary schools in placing students into targeted literacy support from the beginning of year 7.
"Don't wait until a child is failing to act. You need to diagnose on entry, involve staff from the start, and if you're fortunate enough to have digital tools that you can access, align that to your transition work, because it can be transformational."— Talia Caralambos, Director of English, Laidlaw Schools Trust
About Talia Caralambos
Talia Caralambos is Director of English within the School Improvement team at Laidlaw Schools Trust, where she leads on curriculum development and literacy improvement across 11 schools. Her remit spans some of the most linguistically and socioeconomically diverse school communities in the North East of England, including settings where more than 60 languages are spoken by pupils — contexts that demand precision in both assessment and pedagogy.
Her commitment to literacy as a tool for equity has deep personal roots. Caralambos comes from a bilingual household and, at age 17, taught English in India — an experience she describes as the spark behind her lifelong dedication to education through literacy. She trained and taught English and Media at Ritchie Diver Secondary School in London before relocating to the North East in April, bringing a strong grounding in the needs of students who are still finding their voice in English.
That background — both personal and professional — directly informs her approach to the Laidlaw transition programme. Her focus on early diagnostic assessment, particularly through the NGRT, reflects a conviction that literacy gaps must be identified and addressed before they compound, not after they become visible as failure. Her voice in this episode carries the authority of someone who has worked across multiple challenging educational contexts and built systems designed to reach every child, not just the most visible ones.