In short
- No study we found has tested whether offering several times for a reading session raises attendance.
- Attendance affects achievement (Gottfried, 2010), and the timing of the school day has been linked with lateness (Bowers & Moyer, 2017), so timing is worth getting right.
- Choice raises motivation in many studies (Patall, Cooper & Robinson, 2008), but those studies did not measure attendance.
- A school can test the idea in a few weeks by comparing units with one session time against units with two.
Offering several times for the same session sounds as if it must raise attendance. A pupil who cannot come on Tuesday can come on Thursday. The reasoning is sound for some pupils and irrelevant for others. This article separates what is known from what is assumed. It reports research on absence, on the timing of the school day and on choice, and says what each one covers. Then it shows how to test flexible scheduling on your own sessions, with records you already keep.
Does flexible scheduling improve attendance?
Nobody has tested it for reading sessions, so the honest answer is: probably, for some pupils. A second time helps pupils who miss because a session clashes with something they cannot move, such as a club, a bus or a shared device. It does little for pupils who miss through illness, low motivation or a story that is too hard. The share of your absences that are clashes sets the limit on what flexible scheduling can do.
The table sorts common reasons for missing a session. It is reasoning from practice, not a research finding.
| Reason for missing | Would a second time help? | What else to try |
|---|---|---|
| A regular clash: a club, a lesson, the bus, a sibling on the device | Yes, if the second time avoids the clash | Ask about clashes before the unit starts |
| A one-off clash: an appointment or a family event | Yes, if the pupil can switch that week | Allow switching while seats are free |
| Illness | Rarely | Reading at home and a short catch-up |
| Forgot | A little | A reminder the day before |
| The story is too hard or does not interest them | No | Check the level and talk to the pupil |
| Does not want to come | No | Talk to the pupil, then to the parent |
What research on absence tells us
Two findings make attendance worth the effort. Gottfried (2010) studied elementary and middle school pupils in the Philadelphia School District. He used a quasi-experimental design to estimate the effect of days present. The results showed positive, statistically significant relationships with grades and with reading and maths test scores.
Rogers and Feller (2018) showed that attendance can be moved. In a randomised experiment with the parents of 28,080 high-risk students, parents received personalised information about absences. The most effective versions reduced chronic absenteeism by 10% or more. This worked partly by correcting parents' beliefs about how many days their child had missed.
The Education Endowment Foundation (2022) reviewed 72 studies of attendance interventions. It sorted them into eight groups, including mentoring, parental engagement, meal provision and extracurricular activities. None of the eight is about when lessons are timetabled. The review found some promise for responsive approaches that target the individual causes of a pupil's absence. It judged the overall quality of the evidence weak, and all but three studies took place in the USA.
All three sources counted whole days of school. None measured a weekly reading session. How to Track Attendance in Reading Sessions covers these studies in more depth, with what to record and how to tell parents.
What research on timing tells us
The closest research on schedules and turning up is about the start of the school day. Bowers and Moyer (2017) combined studies of school start times. Later start times were associated with longer sleep and less daytime sleepiness. In the three studies that measured it, later starts were also associated with less lateness to school.
The authors asked for cautious interpretation, because more longitudinal research is needed. Their studies were about the start of the whole school day, not a choice between session times. Still, they support a modest point. The time of day can affect whether pupils arrive on time, so a session at 7:30 in the morning or 7 in the evening is not a neutral choice.
What research on choice tells us
Patall, Cooper and Robinson (2008) combined 41 studies of choice, with child and adult samples. Providing choice enhanced intrinsic motivation, effort, task performance and perceived competence. The effect on motivation was stronger for children than for adults.
Two limits matter here. The choices were between activities, versions of a task, rewards and similar options, not session times. And the outcomes were motivation and performance, not attendance. So choice research suggests that pupils may feel better about a session they picked. It does not show that they will come more often. Let Students Choose Their Session covers the choice research and the model itself in more detail.
What nobody has tested
Put the three bodies of research together and the gaps are plain. Research on scheduling reading sessions is thin. As far as we could find, no study has tested any of the following.
- Whether offering a second time for the same session raises attendance.
- Whether pupils who choose their time attend more than pupils assigned to the same time.
- How many times are enough. The first extra time should remove the most clashes, and each later one fewer. That is an expectation to check, not a finding.
- Whether any gain lasts beyond the first weeks, when the change is new.
- Whether results from US school days apply to EFL pupils aged 8 to 16 in reading sessions.
So treat any confident claim about flexible scheduling and attendance with care, including claims about how many extra times you need. How Many Reading Sessions Should You Run Per Unit? works through the arithmetic of times and seats. The test below tells you whether the extra times are paying off.
How to test it in your own school
You can test flexible scheduling with the records you keep anyway. The steps below give a simple before-and-after test. It will not prove cause, but it will tell you more about your own pupils than any study above.
- Pick one grade and keep everything else fixed. Same teachers, same kind of story, same reminders.
- Run two units with one session time. Record, for each pupil, whether they were enrolled and whether they were present.
- Ask absent pupils why, in one line. Note whether the reason was a clash.
- Run the next two units with two times. Use the same content at both, and let each pupil pick one.
- Compare attendance, then look at who changed. Did pupils who gave a clash as their reason start attending?
- Check for other causes. An exam week, a holiday or a new sports season can move attendance on its own.
If you have several classes in the grade, a stronger design is possible. Give half the classes two times and half one time, then swap after two units. Patall, Cooper and Wynn (2010) used a similar reversal when they tested homework choice in classrooms. The swap means each class is compared with itself.
| Unit | Session times offered | Pupils enrolled | Pupils present | Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unit 1 | One | 60 | 46 | 77% |
| Unit 2 | One | 60 | 45 | 75% |
| Unit 3 | Two | 60 | 52 | 87% |
| Unit 4 | Two | 60 | 51 | 85% |
Reading the example
Attendance rose by about ten points after the second time was added.
In unit 1, 8 of the 14 absent pupils gave a clash as the reason. In unit 3, 6 of those 8 attended.
The other absences barely changed: illness, forgetting, and two pupils who rarely come at all.
With 60 pupils, one pupil is almost 2 points. A change of 2 or 3 points could be chance. Ten points, with named pupils behind it, is worth acting on.
Next step: keep both times, and talk to the two pupils who rarely come.
What to do with the result
If attendance rose and the pupils behind the rise are the ones who had clashes, keep the second time and check again after a term. If attendance did not move, look at the reasons pupils gave. A clash-free timetable cannot fix a story that is too hard, and the table at the top of this article suggests what to try instead. If one of the two times stays nearly empty, close it and offer its pupils the other time.
For a longer trial with a comparison class, see how to run a pilot of a reading platform. The same design works for a change to the timetable.
How iRead handles this
In iRead, a session is a live class, online or in school, that students enrol in themselves, and attendance is recorded automatically. Admins or teachers can publish several sessions for the same unit, and each student joins exactly one, the one they can attend. A school can run a free pilot with one class for 4 to 6 weeks, with full dashboards including attendance, before any school-wide decision.
The core principle: A second session time can only fix absences caused by clashes. Find out how many of your absences are clashes, then test the change on your own records.
See it in iRead: Admins or teachers publish several sessions for the same unit, and each student joins the one they can attend. Attendance is recorded automatically.
See how sessions workKey takeaway
Flexible scheduling is a sensible fix for one cause of absence, not a cure for all of it. Research supports its parts but has never tested the whole, so run a before-and-after test and act on your own numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Does flexible scheduling improve attendance?
Nobody has tested it for reading sessions. It should help pupils who miss because of a timetable clash, and it will not help those who miss for other reasons. Absence research shows that attendance matters, and choice research shows choice can raise motivation, but neither tested session times.
How many session times should a school offer?
Start with two. The first extra time should remove the most clashes, and each later time fewer, but that is an expectation, not a finding. Survey pupils' free times, add a third time only if pupils still have clashes, and close any time that stays nearly empty.
How can a school test whether flexible scheduling works?
Run two units with one session time and two units with two times, keeping teachers, stories and reminders the same. Compare attendance, and look at which pupils changed. If you have several classes, swap which classes get two times halfway through, so each class is compared with itself.
Does the attendance research come from EFL schools?
No. The studies cited here counted whole school days, almost all in the USA. Gottfried (2010) studied pupils in Philadelphia, and the Education Endowment Foundation (2022) found that all but three of its 72 studies were from the USA. Your own records are the best evidence for your pupils.
Sources
- Gottfried, M. A. (2010). Evaluating the relationship between student attendance and achievement in urban elementary and middle schools: An instrumental variables approach. American Educational Research Journal, 47(2), 434-465. doi.org/10.3102/0002831209350494
- Rogers, T., & Feller, A. (2018). Reducing student absences at scale by targeting parents' misbeliefs. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(5), 335-342. doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0328-1
- Education Endowment Foundation (2022). Attendance Interventions: Rapid Evidence Assessment. Education Endowment Foundation, London. d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/documents/pages/Attendance-REA-report.pdf
- Bowers, J. M., & Moyer, A. (2017). Effects of school start time on students' sleep duration, daytime sleepiness, and attendance: A meta-analysis. Sleep Health, 3(6), 423-431. doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2017.08.004
- Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Robinson, J. C. (2008). The effects of choice on intrinsic motivation and related outcomes: A meta-analysis of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 270-300. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.270
- Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Wynn, S. R. (2010). The effectiveness and relative importance of choice in the classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(4), 896-915. doi.org/10.1037/a0019545