Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has announced that the back-to-basics method of teaching reading known as ‘synthetic phonics’ is to become a legal requirement ‘embedded in the National curriculum’. This decision follows the conclusions of Jim Rose, a former Deputy Chief Inspector at Ofsted, that phonics work is ‘essential’ to teaching reading.
In a nutshell, synthetic phonics involves blending individual letter sounds to ‘sound-out’ whole words: c-a-t. The call for the phonics approach in primary teaching is not new. Widely used in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was later replaced by methods which relied on readers learning whole words and their meaning simultaneously – building up ‘word recognition’ by building banks of ‘sight vocabulary’. The rejection of phonics centred on the argument that although sounding out words sped up children’s ability to read words in a mechanical sense, it did not help their understanding of what the words actually meant. Half a decade later, the government has rejected this rejection and decided to make it statutory for all schools to use phonics as the ‘first’ strategy in teaching children to read. This will enable children to 'decode' words, and, it is hoped, combat the high proportion of pupils who leave primary school with poor reading and spelling skills.
But isn’t this a u-turn policy-wise? Well yes and no. Ruth Kelly is insisting that it’s not, as synthetic phonics is something which has always been part of the National Literacy Strategy. This is true as the Literacy Strategy recommends a combination of four methods, one of them phonics. However because it is currently only one component of the method mixture in the Strategy teachers aren't able to build the foundations of literacy with a focus on phonics alone. And it is this that is to change, with phonics becoming the ‘prime’ teaching system in all reading lessons.
The Rose Review of phonics was spurred on by the seven-year longitudinal study of phonics teaching in Clackmannanshire (a particularly apt area for testing sounding out). Although children’s comprehension didn’t improve – the original objection – their reading age increased by three years. Whilst developing comprehension skills is clearly vital, the first necessary stage is giving children the skills to be able to access the words themselves.
So even though getting children to sound out may not be altogether new to Dfes policy, getting methods ‘tried out’ is rather a novelty. Perhaps the Dfes is learning – and therefore soon perhaps, so too will our children.
Comments (4)
I am from Canada. Can anyone tell me if teachers using synthetic phonics also use readers? If yes, which ones? If not, aren't they throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Posted by chris | May 8, 2006 4:32 AM
Posted on May 8, 2006 04:32
I am from canada. Can anyone tell me if teachers using synthetic pghonics also use readers? If yes, which ones? If not, aren't they throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Posted by chris | May 8, 2006 4:31 AM
Posted on May 8, 2006 04:31
The strapline of Civitas is "Classical liberal comment on the news and current affairs". Has Anastasia de Waal forgotten this?
Here she is supporting the decision of the government (DfES) to swap one policy imposed from the centre on all schools for another policy also imposed from the centre - by law. A liberal would not support any policy imposed from the centre. A liberal would say that schools themselves should decide on the best methods and be answerable to parents for their results. A liberal would oppose any law which compels children to be taught in a certain way, for the very simple reason that it implies that the government is wiser than millions of individuals.
If one system is better than others, this can be tested if different schools try different methods, because we can compare the results and schools that are then less successful can learn from those that are doing it differently. Perhaps there is a method of teaching reading better than any method yet evaluated by the DfES. We may never know, because schools won't be allowed to try it.
Supporting legal coercion by government to teach in a specific way is not liberalism! It matters not which teaching method you personally happen to prefer.
Posted by HJHJ | March 21, 2006 2:20 PM
Posted on March 21, 2006 14:20
Whilst the return to a phonics based approach to teaching literacy is something that I welcome I think there is a need for caution here.
To date there has been no mass, long term study into the effectiveness of synthetic phonics teaching. Many educationalists (including child-centred learning sceptics) are yet to be convinced of its value.
The reasons why the reading standards of primary school children today are lower than they were fifty years ago are probably more to do with the modern home, lifestyle and pernicious social influences than flash cards.
But this is a reality that New Labour does not wish to acknowledge because like all European social-democratic parties it is still wedded to the false belief that public expenditure and policy directives can reverse profound social malaise.
Posted by Joseph | March 21, 2006 4:57 AM
Posted on March 21, 2006 04:57