...I definitely think the reality of what teachers actually teach compared to the official guidance and compared to what they say they teach is very important and such information should be ascertained as much as possible. ... To discover that needs a detailed investigation along similar lines to H...

By that I mean, if teachers think they are already providing their version of quality systematic synthetic phonics, that is how they would describe their provision on a survey, but from what I've seen, the teachers don't know what they don't know and it might take someone with sufficient knowledge ...

Perhaps, Jenny, you might like to draw attention to this state of affairs to anyone in the EEF or DfE who has some authority to look into this. The letters that I received, nominally from SoSfE, via my (very helpful) MP suggested that the DfE is not interested in doing or funding research as we thi...

I expect the gap to start narrowing in 2022, when the first "children of the check" take their GCSEs. The changes to the evaluation system were categorical: typical of the edicts from a parliament dominated by lawyers supported by other arts graduates. What I would expect from people who have diffic...

Something of the sort that Dick Schutz recommends has been done in the two reports which the National Foundation for Educational Research has so far done on the Y1 phonics check. This was based, however, on teachers' own categorisations of what they were doing, and as you say, kenm, these may not b...

I'm delighted that Nick Gibb will be there and wish l could attend. If I had been free, I would have wanted to ask him whether the DfE was undertaking a study along the lines described by Dick Schutz in his evidence to the Education Select Committee, about a fifth of the way down this page . The las...

This is a synopsis of the letter we received about ; ... Going to start Supported Reading to accelerate reading skills in Y1. Supported Reading has been proven to support all readers with language acquisition, comprehension, and developing reading strategies and lead to accelerated progress. [...] ...

In "Words and Rules", Pinker describes parallel processes to derive the plural form of a root. One is to form it from the most common rule - add "s" - the other looks up an internal table of words with exceptional forms of the plural - e.g. "en". If the look-up fails to deliver a result, the rule is...

Skilled readers use multiple visual & auditory cues to decode words. Cues include letters that look similar, words that are a similar shape or begin with the same sound pattern, sounds that sound similar, context, illustrations etc. My italics. What are these sounds, how am I supposed to hear them,...

Skilled readers use multiple visual & auditory cues to decode words. Cues include letters that look similar, words that are a similar shape or begin with the same sound pattern, sounds that sound similar, context, illustrations etc. This (unskilled?*) reader has an internal voice that sounds the le...

[...] if you google 'Year 1 phonics check consultation Annex B'. 65 graphemes are listed, and the total number of grapheme-phoneme correspondences is over 80. I looked for guidance as to how the nature of the words failed points to an examinee's specific problem, but there is no index and the title...

How about a check on the advanced code for all of Y3 and any in later years who have not yet passed it? That would keep the task in the primary schools where it belongs.

As Debbie says, it shouldn't be either /or. Teach handwriting in the early years and then teach touch-typing at secondary, so students are adept at both. I suggest handwriting from R to Y2, but touch typing earlier than secondary, because by then many children will have been using computers for eno...

I feel that making the phonics too high stakes would put a lot of pressure on children. I would not agree with saying that 90% of children have to pass the test to avoid "requires improvement". Especially as schools that get "requires improvement" are put into a category. Very few ordinary primary ...

My daughter's class have two severely disabled children who stand no chance of passing the phonics test. It really not fair to count a non verbal child who is still in nappies in statistics for passing the phonics test. Small schools need a bit more leeway as well. The nature of the pupils is one o...