Summary of past news on the phonics debate

"The approach which is generally understood as 'synthetic' phonics offers the vast majority of young beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers. Unfortunately, determining what constitutes best practice in 'synthetic' phonics is by no means clear-cut. This is because seemingly small differences in practice are often amplified as strongly held, conflicting views, even among those who champion 'synthetic' phonics. In consequence, there is a somewhat futile debate that risks distracting attention from the important goals of understanding how beginners learn to read and write and shaping practice accordingly."
Jim Rose, December 2005

2007
In September 2007, the TES reported that North Lanarkshire Council had launched a literacy strategy for its primary schools. A pilot of the Active Literacy programme found children in P1 showed gains of five months in their reading scores. The programme puts emphasis on active, multi-sensory tasks that encourage pupils to work cooperatively. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are taught through a combination of systemic phonics instructions and various activities. The idea is that literacy is cross-curricular. To read this article in full, visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2431498 To read about the project in more detail visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2431502 or www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2431503

In the same month, the Daily Mail reported on a study by the think tank Civitas, which showed that primary school children who struggled with their reading increased their reading ages by nearly two years in two weeks when they were given intensive synthetic phonics lessons. Civitas held a summer supplementary school for 15 children aged between 6 and 8, all from disadvantaged areas. The class was given a fortnight of whole-class tuition and the average improvement in reading was one year and nine months.

2006
In December 2006, a letter signed by 100 early years experts was sent to the TES expressing grave concern at the Government's imposition of approved phonics courses on four-year-olds.

In November 2006 the Government announced that all primary schools would be expected to teach reading using specific Government-approved phonics schemes. Commercial phonics programmes would be submitted to a panel of experts to ensure they meet standards being drawn up by the Government, based on the findings of the Rose Review which examined methods for teaching reading.

Synthetic and analytical phonics do not have to compete, say educational psychologists. One project in Scotland has been using both approaches in a pilot scheme. To read this TES article from October 2006 in full visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2294655

The Rose Report has tried to bring a resolution to the phonics wars. Diane Hofkins talks to its author about the when and how of teaching reading, and picks out highlights of the review. To read this TES article from June 2006 in full, visit:www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2250669

In May 2006, the Reading Reform Foundation published responses to research on the use of phonics in the teaching of reading and spelling, and to the draft for the teaching of literacy. In the first, Diane McGuinness responds to a research review by C. Torgerson, G. Brooks and J. Hall, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills. The second is the official Reading Reform Foundation response to the draft literacy framework.

www.rrf.org.uk/Torgersonarticle.pdf

www.rrf.org.uk/RRFdraftframeworkresponse.pdf

The Rose Review on teaching of early reading says most children should begin reading using systematic phonic work by age five. 'Say no to phonics before five!' was a campaign from early years experts. To read a TES article by Sue Palmer on why we should say no to phonics before five, visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2216434

In March 2006, the TES reported that the Rose review recommendations would be incorporated into four major consultations: on the revised national literacy framework, the early years foundation stage and revised standards for qualified teacher status. It has also prompted consultation on revisions to the national curriculum for English.

According to the review, teachers involved in the teaching of reading should:

• judge children's readiness for synthetic phonics work through careful observation and robust assessment
• be able to plan and implement a high-quality phonics programme
• use multi-sensory activities and a mix of resources including ICT within phonics sessions
• praise and encourage achievement at every opportunity
• judge how to organise teaching groups to provide optimum conditions for learning.

Headteachers should:

• make sure that at least one senior member of staff is fully able to take the lead on literacy, especially phonic work
• make sure that phonic work is given appropriate priority in teaching beginner readers and this is reflected in decisions about training for their staff -including teaching assistants
• put strategies in place to ensure that no child "falls through the net", such as comprehensive assessment and allocating resources for catch-up work
• monitor the quality and consistency of the teaching of reading and its outcomes
• strengthen awareness of how phonic work could be applied throughout the curriculum.

Governors should:

• ensure high-quality teaching of reading in key stage 1 informs realistic and ambitious target-setting for English at key stage 2.

In March 2006, the TES reported on the call by Jim Pose to switch off the searchlights model of teaching reading and to use an alternative decoding one. To read the article in full, visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2213282

National Literacy Trust response to the Rose Review interim report on the teaching of reading (February 2006)

The Early Years Curriculum Group consists of recognised early years specialists working as leaders in schools and centres, and in advisory and academic roles. In January 2006, the group agreed that phonics had a place in the teaching of reading but firmly rejected Government proposals that teaching of phonics should start before the age of five. They believed teaching phonics too soon risks damaging children's sense of achievement and self-worth. The group said that children can learn phonics very quickly at a later age, when they are confident communicators and have enjoyed a wide range of rhymes, songs and stories that excite their interest in language and their motivation to read for themselves.

2005

Diane Hofkins, primary editor for Times Educational Supplement, considers the possible implications of the Rose review for early years learning, in an article that was published on 9 December 2005. To read the article visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2170427

Mike Baker, BBC education correspondent, summarises the then current debate around reading methods for primary-aged children in an article that was published online on 2 December 2005. Read the article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/education/4493260.stm

In 2005, Wendy Scott, former adviser to the Department for Education and Skills, and former chairman of the British Association for Early Childhood Education, discusses with the TES the dangers of teaching reading exclusively through phonics:

"The plan to teach children in reception classes a system of phonics to the exclusion of other methods of learning to read runs counter to established evidence about early learning: an overly formal approach at the start risks switching children off reading and school.

An observation from a reception class illustrates why we should all worry about an approach that does not respect the complexity of young children's learning. As part of a systematic approach to teaching phonics, pupils were given a pre-formed letter "E" to match to drawings of a number of items beginning with "E": an egg, an elephant (which children called a toy), an eagle (which children called a bird), a picture of an elbow (children understandably said "arm") and an arrow pointing to the "edge" of the table (children had no knowledge of what this was).

There is, however, no convincing evidence that a formal programme of phonics teaching before five results in better outcomes.On the contrary, children in other countries learn to read, write and spell quickly and accurately at a later stage. Because English is a less regular written language than most, the misguided argument that children will only reach high standards if phonics are taught earlier is actually a reason why systematic instruction should be left at least until Year 1. Younger children need to be physically active, socially involved and creative in their pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Their time is better invested in developing skills in listening and communicating, and engaging in early reading and writing through play.

Successful phonic work depends on children being able to listen well and speak clearly. Teachers need to bear in mind regional variations in pronunciation, and must take account of children who are in the early stages of learning English and all those who have language delay, behavioural difficulties or other problems in listening and speaking."

In June 2005, Helen Bromley told Nursery World why she thought that synthetic phonics could deprive children of literary experiences:

"The tendency to regard phonics as a cure for all reading ills is very worrying. Emphasis is often placed on buying a published phonics scheme or 'doing phonics' for a prescribed amount of time each day. Both these solutions can have negative results. Schemes may not necessarily take into account the interests, passions and emotional needs of the children in the setting, and cannot ensure the centrality of the child at the heart of the learning process, a backbone of good early years practice.

'Doing phonics' for 15 minutes a day in a large group may ensure one kind of coverage, but practitioners need to reflect deeply on whether or not all children are benefiting from such an approach, such as children with English as a second language. They also need to have the confidence to recognise that many aspects of good early years practice in communication, language and literacy - shared reading, shared writing, singing songs, working with children's names, reading alphabet books on a regular basis - are 'doing phonics'.

"Learning is not just cognitive, it is also affective, and children's emotions need to be engaged in a positive way if they are to develop an attitude towards reading that tells them it involves pleasure and desire. Reading needs to be understood by the child to have a purpose and to operate in a context in which they can engage.

"Young children need opportunities to play with letters and sounds, just as they are invited to play with other new concepts. Incorporating letters in dough, sand and water could form part of a far more meaningful phonics scheme than any photocopy ever could. It can also be argued that acquiring knowledge of sound-letter relationships and building the consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words so beloved by the phonics lobby is simply not enough. Children need to learn how and when to use phonic knowledge to their advantage, in conjunction with other clues, in both reading and writing.

"Valuing children's early attempts at reading-like behaviour and at memorising strongly tuned texts so that they can enjoy them on their own terms seems to make much more sense than removing access to books altogether.

"The focus on decoding every single word accurately, with an emphasis on letter-sound relationships as the primary clue, ignores the wealth of research evidence showing that learning to become a reader involves far more than that. There is a need to instil in children a positive attitude towards reading, and this will surely only come from the interaction between quality books, an adult and a child. The research evidence from the longitudinal study Books for Babies, begun by Barry Wade and Maggie Moore in 1992, clearly showed that an introduction to books in the early years of life has an impact on long-term reader development and on other subjects. It demonstrated that "Early interest in and engagement with books is associated with greater focus, motivation and concentration in the classroom in later years." One has to ask how these children would have fared in school if all their early confidence and attitudes, as well as their skills and understandings, had been ignored."

"The dangers of an overemphasis on phonics, and an overemphasis on accuracy at the expense of understanding, are becoming all too clear. The recent Ofsted report into attitudes towards reading showed that if children are engaged in activities where reading has been reduced to a variety of decontextualised exercises, it becomes unattractive to many children. Increased emphasis on word building at the expense of engagement with quality texts could have the same effect in the early years.

"Children have been encountering whole words in context from a very early age, in a variety of ways. To ignore such knowledge, for example by denying access to books until letter/sound relationships are learned, makes no sense at all.

Taken from an article by Helen Bromley in Nursery World, 16 June 2005

In December 2005, Henrietta Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Literacy in Primary Education, University of Brighton, wrote a letter to the Independent:

"Sir: Our knowledge of the best way to teach reading has moved on since 1997, thanks to the insight that successful teachers and schools might have something to teach us. But what large studies on both sides of the Atlantic have shown is not that synthetic phonics is the golden gateway. They tell a rather different story.

"The most effective teachers use a variety of approaches, with a clear focus from the start on both the technical aspects and the making of meaning. They put a high premium on engaging their pupils, helping them to see reading as a way of enlarging their experience, not just as a set of exercises to be carried out to please the teacher. Effective teachers recognise that children need to read large amounts of engaging text to become better at it.

"They certainly teach phonics, but many use a combination of synthetic and analytic phonics, so that children learn to spot patterns and draw analogies. In this way they are enabled to tackle words such as "fall" and "fast", where, although the spelling is regular, the vowels are not readily amenable to "sounding out". In addition, effective teachers teach essential but annoyingly irregular words such as "was" and "you" as sight words.

"Children learning to read in English have an uphill job. The complexity of our spelling system is reckoned to add about two years to the task, as compared with most of the spelling systems of continental Europe. And yet England's 10-year-olds came third after Sweden and Holland in a recent survey of reading competence. But their scores for attitude were much lower. England's 10-year-olds don't like reading as much as they used to.

"If we prioritise synthetic phonics in teaching our five-year olds, we risk a further fall in attitudes to what is arguably the most demanding, but potentially the most rewarding lesson of their early school years."

Henrietta Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Literacy in Primary Education, University of Brighton.

The TES reported in December 2005 that Australia would follow Britain and the United States in a back-to-basics drive to make all school children learn to read through the teaching of phonics. A year-long inquiry into the teaching of reading by an independent committee, chaired by Dr Ken Rowe from the Australian Council for Educational Research, recommended that primary schools adopt systematic phonics instruction.

The report of the inquiry warned against the exclusive use of the whole-language approach where literature, writing and communication activities are used to teach reading, arguing that it is not in the best interests of children, particularly those with difficulties. The inquiry found that in the early years of school, all children learn to read most effectively through an approach that explicitly teaches phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension. The Australian inquiry followed the English review into the teaching of reading, which advocated the use of synthetic phonics. The full report is available at www.dest.gov.au/literacyinquiry

In a separate report, children in Clackmannanshire in Scotland who were taught to read using synthetic phonics were more than three years ahead of their peers by the end of primary school, a study found. The programme, piloted in 19 primary schools, was part of a seven-year study conducted by psychologists at St Andrews and Hull universities. From Primary 1 stage, 300 children spent 20 minutes a day learning the technique. At the end of Primary 7, when the children were around 11 years old, they had a reading age of 15. Experts told the House of Commons education select committee in February 2005 that schools that use only phonics to teach children to read outperform those using the mixture of methods recommended in the Government's national literacy strategy.

2003
In April 2003, the TES reported that Dundee eight-year-olds who were unable to read made a month's progress in a week using a modified synthetic phonics approach. One improved by 2 months in a two-week period. Grethe Thomson, a psychologist with the city council, said that remarkable results had been achieved since 1999, when the project was tested with small groups of non-readers in four primaries. Learning support teachers taught groups of five for 45 minutes a day over eight weeks. Of eight non-readers who were below age five on the British Ability Scale, seven made a minimum of seven months' progress.

2001
In October 2001, Ofsted published a paper on the teaching of phonics. Overall, they found that phonic teaching had increased significantly since the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy and the debate was no longer about whether phonic knowledge and skills should be taught, but how best to teach them. To read the full text of the paper visit www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications/index.cfm?fuseaction=pubs.summary&id=1251

1998
In November 1998, the TES reported on a one year pilot study of 300 schoolchildren in Scotland showed those taught using synthetic phonics were seven months ahead with their reading and nine months ahead with their spelling compared to the Government's strategy.

In 1998, the DfES said: "Children spend five minutes on word-level phonic activities in the Early Literacy Support Programme in addition to the 15 minutes of daily word-level teaching received each day in the literacy hour.