Helping children to learn phonics at home has made a big impression on many parents. I wonder how much stress and conflict have blown up as parents have understandably struggled with terms like “split digraph”?
But in the background, researchers and educators have been fighting “phonics wars” for the best part of a century. Writing in 1934, the early years pioneer Susan Isaacs argued against using phonics to teach reading. She held that “the most natural unit of speech in the young child is the word”.
Many of her successors agree. Professor Margaret M Clark is a contemporary campaigner against synthetic phonics. Like Isaacs, she argues that “decoding at the level of the grapheme and phoneme develops later than recognition of larger segments of print”.
Literacy: Phonics benefits children who struggle with reading
It’s surprising that this war continues; the research is conclusive. Take, for example, the 2016 paper by Stephen Machin and colleagues at the London School of Economics. They concluded that a systematic synthetic phonics programme significantly benefits “children with a higher initial propensity to struggle with reading”. Furthermore, no group of children loses out.
This matters. In economically-developed countries, 15 per cent of adults struggle with basic literacy skills. They can’t read the instructions on an aspirin bottle.
In England, younger adults perform no better than older ones. For decades, English schools didn’t get any better at teaching reading.
Research in support of phonics
Today, we know that effective programmes to teach reading will include a synthetic phonics programme.
The Education Endowment Foundation recommends that “early reading should be developed using a balanced approach that focuses on both language comprehension and decoding”. They also emphasise the importance of using storytelling, songs and rhymes. It explains the importance of approaches like dialogic reading, where the book becomes a focal point for conversation.
Isn’t it time for everyone to move with the research? I often reflect on what Thomas Kuhn wrote about the history of scientific research. Of course, educational and scientific research are very different, but I still find Kuhn’s concept of “normal science” to be helpful: when scientists carry out their work without challenging the underlying theories.
I’d argue that the synthetic phonics approach is part of “normal science” now. But that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot to learn. Research is vital, so that practice can continue to evolve from what we know and do now.
For example, the Institute of Education is running a trial on “flexible phonics”. If this approach is successful, it will build on what we know, and could improve teaching with phonics. That’s how “normal science” works.
Kuhn argues that without “normal science”, different theories just fight it out. There’s plenty of anger, but no growth in knowledge. That’s what it was like when I trained to be a teacher. It can still be like that in early years circles.
Going back to the 1930s, Susan Isaacs also argued that “in the end, of course, one judges between rival methods [of teaching reading] on the evidence as one sees it”. The evidence all points one way now. It’s time to end the phonics war.
Dr Julian Grenier is the headteacher of Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre in East London. He co-leads the East London Research School
