The national curriculum focus on primarily using phonics to teach reading is not backed by evidence, and “vital improvements” are “urgently needed” to improve reading outcomes for pupils, Nadhim Zahawi has been told today.
In an open letter sent to the education secretary (the full text is at the bottom of this article), reading experts call on the government to “discontinue its vetting of phonics schemes” and increase the time that pupils are required to spend reading overall.
Teachers should be given control over what resources they use to teach reading, the letter says. It has more than 250 signatories, including primary heads, heads of department, policymakers, academics and children’s author Michael Rosen.
The letter - which also calls on the Department for Education to abandon its use of the phonics screening check as a national statutory test - coincides with a major new research paper published today by academics at the Institute of Education (IOE) at UCL, which says that there isn’t any evidence to support the DfE’s focus on using phonics first and foremost to teach reading.
IOE professors Dominic Wyse and Alice Bradbury authored the letter and the research paper, “Reading wars or reading reconciliation?”, which is published in the Review of Education today.
Findings are based on a survey of more than 2,000 teachers and an analysis of trends in Sats, Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls).
The national curriculum focus on a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) approach in particular - and the associated statutory phonics screening check assessment and its role underpinning the reading framework - is supported by many researchers, but controversial with others. The DfE says it is the most effective method for teaching early reading.
Encouraging motivation for reading
The letter argues that the “most robust research…strongly suggests that changes to policy and guidance are needed”. It says that teachers should be encouraged to “focus first and foremost” on pupils “making sense of texts”, with the teaching of phonics then “carefully linked” with the reading of “whole texts”.
It adds that the overall approach should be on encouraging motivation for reading, and calls for a “range of phonics-teaching” approaches.
Speaking to Tes about the research, Professor Wyse said he was “genuinely shocked” to discover the lack of evidence to support separate teaching of synthetic phonics.
“The majority of teachers we surveyed told us that they teach synthetic phonics - no other form of phonics - and they teach it separately from comprehension teaching,” he said. “That is actually a big change.
“Yet I was genuinely shocked to find out that there is very little evidence to support the use of synthetic phonics [in the way it is currently taught].”
He added: “Our review found that there isn’t strong evidence that it should be synthetic phonics only, or that this should be taught separately.”
The authors acknowledge limitations to the research, including the possibility there may have been other longitudinal experimental trials on the effectives of teaching that they could not locate.
Meanwhile, the letter concludes that teachers are “better placed to decide which resources to use” to support their pupils, and “how to assess children’s early reading development”.
Doesn’t consider “at-risk” readers
However, the research has been challenged by Julia Carroll, who is professor of child development and education at Coventry University, who told Tes that it’s “disappointing” the research does not consider the needs of “at-risk” readers and that it fails to make “a clear distinction” between early and later literacy teaching.
“A key part of the ‘phonics first and foremost’ approach is that most learners should then be able to move on from phonics tuition during Year 2 or Year 3, when the focus on whole texts and comprehension begins (though, of course, there should be book reading before that).
“Focusing research only on Year 1 and Year 2 does focus on a point in literacy teaching when there is a lot of phonics teaching, to the exclusion of comprehension to a certain extent, because learners need to be able to read individual words to read whole texts,” says Professor Carroll.
“The authors do not address struggling readers or ‘at-risk’ readers at all,” she adds.
“In fact, in their qualitative review, they exclude papers dealing with at-risk readers. This is disappointing because these are exactly the group who are particularly affected by the approach to literacy teaching they receive. Systematic phonics approaches are particularly useful to help at-risk readers.
Professor Carroll also comments that combining reading skills teaching is likely to “overwhelm” younger pupils: ”[The paper] argues that adopting the Simple View of Reading as a framework has led to a separation between phonics and language comprehension, whereas these skills need to be combined in successful reading. I agree that yes, they do need to be combined, but only after each has been established in its own right.
“If you give young children all the relevant information all at once they are likely to be overwhelmed. Practising skills in isolation so that they become familiar and automatic, then combining them later, is more likely to lead to success in the long term.”
James Bowen, policy director at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said that the research raises “interesting questions” about how schools’ approaches to teaching reading “fit together”, but that the statutory phonics check has now “served its purpose”.
“There are few things more important in primary schools than teaching children to read,” Bowen said. “Phonics is a key part of that process, and schools have invested a significant amount of energy and resources into ensuring they have effective, evidence-based approaches to teaching phonics in place.
“But of course, learning to read is about more than phonics alone, and schools think carefully about how phonics fits into their overall approach to teaching reading, including instilling a love of reading among pupils. This research raises interesting questions about how those different aspects fit together.”
He added: “The NAHT believes that there are simply too many statutory assessments during primary school and that the phonics check has now served its purpose. Schools will of course want to continue to assess pupils progress in reading and phonics, but they don’t need a national statutory test in order to do that.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are committed to raising literacy standards by following the evidence. Systematic phonics teaching has been proven the world-over to be the most effective method of teaching children to read.
“Since the introduction of the phonics screening check in 2012, the percentage of Year 1 pupils meeting the expected standard in reading has risen from 58 per cent to 82 per cent, with 92 per cent of children achieving this standard by Year 2.
“In line with the evidence, our guidance on reading makes clear that phonics is just one part of becoming a fluent reader. As well as systematic phonics teaching, teachers should also focus on speaking and reading stories to foster a love of reading among children.”
You can read the full letter below.
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