Claims

Story length correlates with National Curriculum attainment level in children's Key Stage 2 narrative writing, with roughly 300 words needed for Level 4 and 400 or more for Level 5

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · design r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2002 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? In a formative analysis of 12 examiner-marked SATs stories, longer stories achieved higher National Curriculum levels, with approximately 300 words required for Level 4 and approximately 400 words or more likely to achieve Level 5. → C.E. Holdich 2002

Evidence

C.E. Holdich 2002

C.E. Holdich, R.G. Holdich and P.W.H. Chung. (2002). Assessing aspects of children's written grammar: automating the process. Computers and Education, Vol 39, pp37-50. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

q2 · i? · design · r2

Computer text analysis of 12 Year 6 SATs stories (levels 2c to 5+) compared word counts to examiner-assigned levels; totals ranged from 228 to 829 words. The authors call this 'the least satisfactory of the ten indicators, but the trend is obvious'.

"the length of a story correlated successfully with the level of attainment achieved: the longer the story, the higher the level achieved. It would appear that a minimum of approximately 300 words is required to explain a story in sufficient detail in order to gain Level 4, whilst the ability to write approximately 400 words, or more, is likely to achieve Level 5."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id story-length-correlates-with-ks2-attainment
title Story length correlates with National Curriculum attainment level in children's Key Stage 2 narrative writing, with roughly 300 words needed for Level 4 and 400 or more for Level 5
description Story length correlates with National Curriculum attainment level in children's Key Stage 2 narrative writing, with roughly 300 words needed for Level 4 and 400 or more for Level 5
status review
evidence_strength weak
newest_evidence 2002
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-29
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — ce-holdich-2002

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