About Us

– David Morgan

The story of the Trainertext Trust and All Aboard Learning starts in a little windowless room, somewhere deep inside Wandsworth Prison, in south London.

It was June 1999. Like every room in the prison, the walls were painted gloss grey and the seats were Spartan, to say the least. I was at the end of a routine discussion with Mike, one of the prison officers we had been collaborating with. So, happily, I would be free to leave the building in a few minutes.

“David, it’s amazing to see the inmates learning to read. We love it because it transforms them. But it means there’s a problem, doesn’t it?”

“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. And maybe not ended up here. 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.”

I knew that Mike was right. Clearly the resources given to the teachers were not working. But really… changing that was a bit beyond my scope! So I just got on with life.

But as an engineer, I found the question interesting and intriguing. How could we make learning to read easier for any child? I struggled to read through my entire childhood, so I had some sense of the impacts it can have. Then, as an adult I suddenly became a passionate reader, just like the prison inmates.

It felt a bit crazy, but eventually, in early 2000, I started researching the neurology of learning and of learning to read. And I started testing some new approaches. In the end I stumbled on the idea of trainertext. Testing trainertext in our local Oxford schools proved that it clearly did help the children. And by 2008 I felt we had a system that we could launch as a solution.

But it didn’t work! Mike’s mission of a better solution was not being accomplished. We were seeing a lot of children progress faster, but a big minority were still stuck. I had failed, because every reading system seemed to help some but not others. Our new Easyread System was just the same.

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

We had not idea why! But more research into the neurology of the visual system threw up two potential issues: A weak cerebellum and/or a weak magnocellular system, might be the causes of this visual frustration.

So we started testing new ways to overcome those barriers too. And they worked. For instance, if the children with a weak cerebellum followed the simple Eye Tracking Exercise Protocol we developed, their eye control would improve in a matter of days. Suddenly they could now access smaller text. Hallelujah!

But… still more problems were evident for other learners. So, in the same way, we kept digging to find out what was causing each of them. And then, case by case, we developed a simple protocol to overcome the problem found.

In the end we have found nine different possible barriers to reading. 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 have to be resolved for success to be possible.

That is why we have found 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, isn’t it always worth it, to do whatever is necessary to get each child reading?

All our research in the years 2008-2020 was done with our Easyread System. We tracked each child through the system to ensure success and deal with any frustrations. Tens of thousands of children around the world have learned to read on the Easyread System.

In the early 2020s we developed the All Aboard Phonics system. This is a systematic synthetic phonics curriculum, following the structure of the science of reading. But unlike other systems, it has all our knowledge of the potential causes of frustration built into it and comes with our expert support. Schools using All Aboard Phonics expect to see every child reading confidently by the age of 7, compared to less than half using conventional systems. Around a quarter of children are still functionally illiterate at the age of 11.

Finally, we have built the Reading Copilot Library here on this site. The new library comes full circle to Wandsworth Prison, because it is designed to work well for youths and adults. Our aim is to be able to reach all of those people who are frustrated by their reading and want to improve it. So it is formatted in a way that allows them to do that, without feeling like they are going back to a tiny desk for a six year-old. With the right support, we are confident of getting any adult reading proficiently, if they can see the text clearly and can speak the language.