Synthetic Phonics – the answer to all our prayers?

Updated 1st December 2010
White Paper focuses clearly on phonics
Section 4.16 makes explicit reference to ’systematic synthetic phonics’.

http://bit.ly/gOnSoF

There is also reference to funding in the Economic Impact Assessment:

37. We will invest to support phonics teaching in primary schools to increase significantly the number of children who develop secure reading skills as early as possible in their education. THe potential cost to Government of match-funding phonics products and training would be up to a maximum of £50.7m if the 16,900 primary schools with children in Key Stage 1 sought resources at the maximum level of £3,000. We would propose to fund half the eligible schools in each of the two years 2011-2012 and 2012-2013.

Two dissenting voices come from the NUT and NASEN who suggest that isystematic phonics isn’t necessarily right for ALL children and a different strategy might be more sensible in some cases.

http://bit.ly/e8bMkx
http://bit.ly/glCI1Z

END OF UPDATE 1st December 2010

Recent stories in the BBC and others indicate that there remain issues with the teaching of reading in English schools. 15% children at age 7 and 20% of children at age 11 are not reading at the ‘expected’ level for their age.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11735317

This has prompted more directives from Nick Gibb and Christine Gilbert at Ofsted about the teaching of reading with a clear and unswerving focus on synthetic phonics.

This works for me and having seen a move from ‘real books’ in the 80s and 90s; to the ’searchlights’ model of the National Literacy Framework; and finally a move back to synthetic phonics I personally think that this is the right way for the pendulum to be swinging at the moment.

However, as with all educational movements it seems prudent to review its success in light of the same government statistics.

2007
Letters and Sounds (a synthetic phonics approach to learning to read) became the favoured approach of the government in 2007 following the Rose Review of the previous year. There was much gnashing of teeth by some literacy experts who were concerned that children would be readers but not ‘in love with reading’. I personally think there are two stages to the process here and broadly agree with Jim Rose’s approach.
% of children at ‘expected’ level in reading at age of 7 = 83.7%

2008
% of children at ‘expected’ level in reading at age of 7 = 83.8%

2009
% of children achieving ‘expected’ level in reading at age of 7 = 84.4%

2010 …
… when government and Ofsted call for teaching of synthetic phonics in schools … again:
% of children achieving ‘expected’ level of reading at age of 7 = 84.8%

So we have 1.1% more children achieving the expected level since synthetic phonics was adopted as the ‘national way to read’. It’s good but is it the success we were expecting four years after Letters and Sounds was introduced into English schools?

My anecdotal evidence from tutoring and working with children of various ages says that spelling is the real beneficiary of synthetic phonics but as far as a love of reading, well that’s down to the books you are introduced to once the decoding has been secured.

Key Stage 2 results in 2014 will be the best judge of how synthetic phonics works but from next year we should see a real upswing in Key Stage 1 results if Letters and Sounds is all its cracked up to be and synthetic phonics works.

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