Rollacoasta said:
"What I can't understand is how children achieving this level of reading are then classed 'functionally illiterate'. No-one's really explained that yet."
Let's turn this round a little. What I cannot understand is how children who very clearly cannot achieve any of the criteria set out for achieving L3, have been given that level? Why do you think I am seething with frustration at having those criteria quoted at me and people telling me that children who are L3 are 'functionally litterate' when my practical, on the ground experience of L3 children over nearly 10 years tells me that they are nothing of the sort?
We have had Universities and leaders of industry telling us for years that many young people, even those held to be capable of getting degrees, are semi-literate, to which the government and the 'educational establishment' have responded with bland public denials of any problem at all. I personally had a friend tell me this weekend of her despair at the poor quality of literacy displayed by younger workers in the company she works for (a very large, international company). The remark was completely unsolicited; we were talking about something else at the time! I know that anecdote isn't evidence and that there never was a Golden Age etc. but when so many people are raising concerns why is there so much denial?
mrz. I know that Jolly Phonics has been very widespread for years but the success of a programme depends as much on how it is taught as what it contains. I know of EY teachers in despair because their careful phonics teaching in YR or Y1 is overturned by 'mixed methods'teaching in Y2+. And, what about the NLS Searchlights? They were attempted to be rigorously enforced by LA advisors & consultants right up until 2007; you know as well as I do that the searchlights strategies directly contravene the principles of synthetic phonics teaching.
Even now some people don't know about the 'new' guidance! Have you not seen the TES thread recently where a KS2 teacher said that she was completely unaware of the 'simple view of reading' and didn't know that the searchlights stratgies had been superceded?
Sue Lloyd training in our LA? I'm sure it was very good at the time, but did she train all the teachers in a school or just KS1?
And, don't the effects of training wash out over time as new teachers and HTs come into schools with different ideas and beliefs? I have known Sue Lloyd for about 4 years now and she has never mentioned coming to our LA to train in all that time so I assume she must have come earlier. I suspect that 4+ years is plenty of time for training to be diluted. Surely, unless all the teachers are trained and the whole school uses the appropriate SP strategies there is lots of room for 'other strategies' to come creeping back in (if they ever went away!)?
And, I am afraid that the children's IEPs from primary school still show massive evidence of whole word/mixed methods 'rememdiation'. I do admit that most of these IEPs begin before 2007, so are in line with the then current guidance. Whether this changes over the next few years remains to be seen.
jackstarbright. I identify and assess every pupil coming into Y7 with a L3 or below for English. Usually this is the Teacher Asessment, which I feel is more accurate than the NCT test (SAT) result. We don't usually get the official NCT result until late September. There are always some surprises!
If their word reading and spelling ages are roughly in line with their chronological age and they can competently read all of the placement passages for the programme I use, I don't withdraw them for extra help. This is very rare, though.