School stopped sending physical reading books!

[Trumpetpants]

Just that really, for the whole of Key Stage One no physical reading books being given! Reading has to be done via a difficult to access link. Asked why this is and told because 4 children don't return the books so all to be done on line.
If your device is over a year old it is not possible to access for some wierd reason.
We offered to fund raise for more books but school said no. I think this is very unreasonable and unfair, grrrr

Local library? Tons of Stages 1 to 3 books available for free, plus a raft of other terrific reading matter for young readers?

Really hate when people say this.

Our local library is poor. The selection of reading books suitable for KS1 is very old fashioned, they are look and say books with lots of key word repetition and nauseam and dont fit well at all with a phonics approach. There are a few phonics books but everyone wants them so they are never in/have waiting lists and sods law by the time your child gets there they've moved on and are ready for something harder.

DD’s school uses RWI and still uses a wild range of books. I’m sick of Biff and Chip.

DDs school has done this. I hate it Nd refuse to read online with her, it's tiring staring at screens, you can't use your finger to guide you as much so she ends up accidentallu turning the page or zooming in and out, it really is awful.

In the end I just spent about £100 on book collections for her which is ridiculous. We have passed them around as she finished the books and we will keep them for DS but a lot of other people are left grappling with the awful website or not having a device to use.

Anyway, reading for the love of reading, bedtime stories etc. has more of an impact over children learning to read than taking home book band books. (As long as the school are teaching reading properly in school)

This is rubbish. Bedtime stories foster a love of stories. They might help children build a good vocabulary and comprehension but they do not give children the skill to read words themselves. Neither does reading in school - children make most progress one to one and that's available in school if you are lucky once a week. A child who reads themselves (not just be read to) daily will make far more progress.

I would refuse to do this. There are endless ways to procure books cheaply or even for free, if you can't/don't want to pay full price for them - charity shops, school fairs, jumble sales, Facebook Marketplace, Freecycle et al. Or from friends? That's assuming the library is a bit rubbish, as they often are (sadly). It's a horrific idea (to me) that children would grow up thinking that reading is something you only do on a screen.

I’m sure there is something sound in the theory but the reading books coming home have just been rubbish compared to last term. Last term we had a new book home every night and my daughter made lots of progress with reading. Now we get one book band book home on a Tuesday and one phonics book which she has read multiple times and memorised. This week she didn’t even bring home her phonics book so she has had one book from school all week.

I’m not really convinced the transition is having the effect DFE wanted.

@OfstedOffred

Anyway, reading for the love of reading, bedtime stories etc. has more of an impact over children learning to read than taking home book band books. (As long as the school are teaching reading properly in school)

This is rubbish. Bedtime stories foster a love of stories. They might help children build a good vocabulary and comprehension but they do not give children the skill to read words themselves. Neither does reading in school - children make most progress one to one and that's available in school if you are lucky once a week. A child who reads themselves (not just be read to) daily will make far more progress.

Which is why I also said "as long as the school are teaching properly in school".

Reading book bands at home gives children 1 terms extra progress vs children who do not read at home. Whereas sharing a good story and talking about it at home daily, gives children up to an extra 1 years progress (albeit delayed progress i.e. progress is not evident until 1 year later) vs those who do not. That is evidence based research, not MN opinion.

@Fallagain

DD’s school uses RWI and still uses a wild range of books. I’m sick of Biff and Chip.

They could come unstuck in the next Ofsted if they are doing this.

It’s a real shame they’ve decided to punish the masses. There are certain children who we don’t allow to take a book home as they never ever come back but they don’t read anyway so we read with them daily and keep their book in school with us. All you can do, if school really won’t change their minds, is facilitate her reading yourself. If you’re local library doesn’t have a very good selection of phonic reader books (ours stocks the usborne reader books which my ds always enjoyed) then it might be worth scouring Facebook marketplace for reading schemes people have finished with and Amazon where there are loads of different phonic based books available.

We trialled an online system alongside physical books and it wasn’t very popular among our parents and after our year subscription (which was £££) gave it up as a bad job.

@PinkFlipFlop85 you've misunderstood the Ofsted guidance. You need fidelity to an approved phonics scheme and you need phonetically decodable reading books, but the reading books do not have to be from the same company as your phonics scheme.

[quote Shuffletime]@PinkFlipFlop85 you've misunderstood the Ofsted guidance. You need fidelity to an approved phonics scheme and you need phonetically decodable reading books, but the reading books do not have to be from the same company as your phonics scheme. [/quote]
I know they don't have to be from the same company. When we audited the ort books many did not match the RWI levels due to the graphemes being taught in a completely different order.

There is a statement in the guidance that says books shouldn't be from different schemes.

Really really bad!

OFSTED clearly haven't read their own guidance then because they commented on the fidelity of books and even wall displays to the scheme!

We tried the online books during lockdowns when school weren’t allowed to send home physical books. My daughter is an excellent reader for her age (now ORT level 14 as a summer born yr 1) but she could not read the online books on my tablet or laptop - she said they made her eyes ache. I could see she was struggling to focus, she kept looking away from the screen and was very wriggly in her seat, yet she would concentrate amazingly on a physical book. I ended up buying physical books until the school reopened as she has always been a super keen reader and seemingly her eyes couldn’t cope with the electronic version. I definitely wouldn’t be happy with school not providing physical books,

Gosh that sounds awful. Tbh if that happened at our school I would start looking around for another. I can’t see how making DC learn to read on devices makes any sense at all.

That's dreadful and would be enough to make me change schools.

@Trumpetpants

A lot of families are unhappy about it, but there isn't much we can do. I was going to approach parent governor but there isn't a governing body anymore :(

@Trumpetpants

I assume an academy ( the joys of the system, no local independent oversight) with no governors.

For academies, oversight sits with the Regional Schools Commissioner and ultimately the Education Minister.

Contact details for each area are here. www.gov.uk/government/organisations/regional-schools-commissioners/about

Screens can cause vision problems if not used with care. I'm not okay using them for high concentration phonics work with young children.

@OfstedOffred

Local library? Tons of Stages 1 to 3 books available for free, plus a raft of other terrific reading matter for young readers?

Really hate when people say this.

Our local library is poor. The selection of reading books suitable for KS1 is very old fashioned, they are look and say books with lots of key word repetition and nauseam and dont fit well at all with a phonics approach. There are a few phonics books but everyone wants them so they are never in/have waiting lists and sods law by the time your child gets there they've moved on and are ready for something harder.

That's a real shame, and perhaps worth some sort of campaign. Perhaps schools which are replacing books that no longer "fit" could pass them to the library to expand their stock...

It is incredibly expensive to buy all the new books for a reading scheme. However, i do think schools should plan to do this (with the PTA), start at one level and keep going. Our deputy also spent ages at home in the evening going through the 'old' books re-banding them to match the new scheme where possible. There were lots of grants and match funding around last year.
But mainly its really sad budgets are too tight for books

This is beyond dreadful. Really bad for children’s eyes if nothing else. Refuse to do it.

Utterly crazy decision. I’d be kicking up a massive fuss about this.

DD starts Reception in September, and this kind of stuff is exactly why we plumped for the school that made a point of advertising its values and approach as ‘old fashioned’.

They should encourage children to use screens less, not more!

@Onionpatch

It is incredibly expensive to buy all the new books for a reading scheme. However, i do think schools should plan to do this (with the PTA), start at one level and keep going. Our deputy also spent ages at home in the evening going through the 'old' books re-banding them to match the new scheme where possible. There were lots of grants and match funding around last year. But mainly its really sad budgets are too tight for books

Reading books should be the basis of any school . Books aren't that expensive in the great scheme things.

@Bitofachinwag - when you are running a deficit budget books are expensive.

I said schools should be buying them and there are grants around and PTA help - but people really need to reflect that schools are making decisions like this because they dont have enough money.