The Reading Reform Foundation is a non-profit making organisation. It was founded by educators and researchers who are concerned about the high functional illiteracy rates among children and adults in the United Kingdom and in the English-speaking world.
Based on a wealth of scientific evidence, members of the Reading Reform Foundation are convinced that reading failure is caused by faulty instructional methods. A particular fault of these methods is that they under-emphasise the need for children to be taught the alphabetic code: the way in which individual speech-sounds (phonemes) are represented by letters and combinations of letters.
The United Kingdom chapter of the Reading Reform Foundation was set up in 1989 to promote the teaching of the alphabetic code in a research-based way, and this remains its main aim.
• to promote research-based principles of reading instruction
• to promote the use of research-informed reading instruction programmes
• to promote the use of standardised reading tests at frequent intervals
• to provide information about effective teaching methods
• to work to ensure that governmental departments become accountable for the effectiveness of the educational programmes they promote
• to disseminate information through the website and message forum on an ongoing basis