Why is MN so obsessed with reception reading?

[skiphopskidaddle]

It's a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn't matter if Johnny is on red and Amy is on lilac as (a) different schools go at different paces and (b) children develop different skills in different order.

I can't quite believe the number of reception reading threads I've seen this week along the lines of "what colour book is yours on?". I'm going over to the behaviour/development board now to check for obsessive posting about when children learn to walk. Cos it doesn't matter either, in general.

mathanxiety you will be pleased to know we don't have any TAs to teach middle groups or indeed any middle groups for them to teach.

It isn't a new phenomenon Bonsoir some universities just don't prepare students for the practicalities of the classroom.

So what are trainee primary school teachers learning at university? Child development theory?

Obviously there is a huge variation but I don't think child development figures highly on many courses either.

The benefit of national tests as far as I can see is their comparative value. System -wide they can deliver useful information. We have not had national tests for public consumption in Oz as long as the UK has, and I am fully aware of the damage they can do, but I also know one or two schools that have chosen to take the results at face value and as a consequence have endeavoured to improve their instruction. The beneficiaries of that are children!

While I sympathise hugely with schools who have to bear a huge administrative burden from national tests, I wonder whether this reading test for 6 year olds wouldn't have a significant consciousness-raising benefit for phonic teaching of reading? If every child in the country is going to be tested on their phonics/reading at 6, teacher training courses are surely more likely to sit up and take note of the skills their students needs to be taught? And prospective students will themselves be made aware of the skills they will need to learn in order to be employed at the end of their courses?

Agreed. The early years best possible outcome is for children to adore going to school - they've got years and years and years of teaching, learning and monitoring to adopt more formally to printed matter. Early hothousing is a key factor in disaffection.

The problem with that Bonsoir is the test will be administered by the class teacher who will judge the child's phonics knowledge and ability and may not have a great deal knowledge or ability her/himself ... [cynical smiley]

missmehalia no one is talking about hothousing.

There are enough tests in the system as it is. They don't seem to raise standards either. They are pointless and meaningless. Teachers assess children all the time. SATs at Key Stage 2 are solely for league tables; secondary schools don't look at them at all. What needs to be looked at is a complete rehaul of the entry requirements required for primary school teachers. It's too easy to become a teacher these days and that's wrong. The PGCE needs to be more rigorous (perhaps 2 years instead of one), teachers need to be held with greater regard in society, they need to be paid more and have less crappy admin. All the 'parenting' teachers get lumbered with should be directed to health visitors and other professionals. The teachers should be given more freedom to teach in the way they want too. Class sizes need to be reduced and teachers need more power back to them to deal with difficult behaviour. I have HUGE respect for teachers in the state sector. They work damn hard and some work in very tough conditions. I think the system is at fault as the teachers are only reacting to all the changes to the curriculum year after year after year.

The current government (as did the previous) seem to believe that success in a previous profession means you can roll up to school and teach (think city bankers and ex forces). I find it amazing that an accountant can be fast tracked into QTS but a very experienced and knowledgeable Nursery Nurse has to take the long route... who has more knowledge of how children learn?

The poorly trained teacher will fall into the lap of producers of synthetic phonic schemes - teaching 'reading' by numbers using lots of expensive resources, following a script, day after day. Grim.

Will someone, mathanxiety, please point me to the rigorous, RCT, quantitative, research studies which show that mixed methods/whole language methodologies for the initial teaching of reading have a success rate approaching 90-95%?

If they cannot, would they then please explain why these methods have been used in schools for the past few decades and why, with these methods, there has been a consistent 'failure' rate of 20% (based on the only 'national' measure of 'levels' at the end of KS2)

the trouble is they don't zebedeee they just don't teach it they dip in and out of this and that and the other...

Zebedee you are right to suspect that SP is/will be teacher-proof. It is my suspicion that eventually there will be TAs paid much less than teachers doing most of the 'teaching', as has already been admitted in Mrz's link a few posts back. Pleased to know that your own perfect school doesn't use TAs in place of teachers, though I don't see why they wouldn't since the reception teacher doesn't actually know how to teach... What's the difference between a teacher with no experience and inadequate training and a TA after all? Answer = salary. Since there will now be a reading test administered at age 6, I can foresee a lot of teaching of the middle by TAs, while the teacher focuses on the high achievers (to bring up the average) and the low achievers (to prevent the average from being dragged down). But then I am a bit of a cynic.

'How do you account for the discrepancy between teaching policy and training policy?' Bonsoir, with the micromanagement of teachers that in envisioned by the paper Mrz linked to there will in the future be no need really for teacher training colleges unless they are all turned into academies training recruits in the SP method. The professional development and mentoring of teachers, management, supervision, accountability, etc., will all take place at school level.

MaizieD please read my last link, and you are welcome to investigate the many studies cited in the references section. Here it is again the Wyse and Goswami paper.

If you are suggesting that SP has a success rate of 90-95% you will have to show proof (rigorous, RCT, quantitative, etc...).

The reason why different methods are chosen for teaching reading is politics, pure and simple. Politics in departments of education, politics in universities, politics at election campaigns with politicians preying on the anxieties of voting parents of young children. Politicians don't actually care about education imo; they are more concerned with votes. But sadly, they are the ones with the power. It has been said that the British Education Secretary has powers that are the envy of totalitarian regimes the world over. The concentration of power in the minister's hands came about under the Major administration, when managerialism held sway as a political ideal. But from 1948 the assumption that 'the men in Whitehall' knew more about what was good for children than anyone else was the guiding mantra.

Why there has been a consistent failure rate with whatever methods were used (hardly any of which can be described or quantified as it seems there were actually as many methods as there were teachers), bearing in mind that until the 60s phonics was king, is anyone's guess.

The difference between a NQT and an experienced, qualified TA is a few pounds a year mathanxiety (the TA getting slightly more)

You can get onto a TA course with few/no formal qualifications - you can only get to be a teacher with GCSEs + A levels and usually a degree!!!!!!! And often a post-grad qualification too.

mathanxiety I believe Maizie has told you already she read the Wyse Goswami document in 2008 when it was published as did I.

candleshoes I said an experienced, qualified TA we don't employ anyone without good qualifications.

Why there has been a consistent failure rate with whatever methods were used ...bearing in mind that until the 60s phonics was king, is anyone's guess.

It's simply because English has a 'nightmare alphabetic code'. For as long as learning to read English remains as difficult as it is, roughly 20% of children will have trouble coping.

Nearly all do well for as long as they are exposed only to regularly spelt words and are not expected to read anything they have not been taught. It is at around 7, when pupils are increasingly expected to read to learn, rather than just learn to read, that many encounter serious problems.

But did you read for comprehension or for accuracy? I think accuracy trumped comprehension. Because I don't think you understand the conclusions

Mrz as your sad tale of the NQT with good qualifications demonstrates, qualifications mean diddly squat sometimes.

I fully understood the Wyse Goswami document thank you mathanxiety as I understand the other links you provided. Fortunately, unlike you I, am not relying totally on someone else's conclusions, as I can compare/contrast what I read with many years of background experience to draw my own conclusions.

It is truly sad that someone would choose to ignore the conclusions of excellent research and plough on regardless with a method that has only your own observations to recommend it above others. You and others claimed earlier in the thread that SP was 'evidence based' -- yet now it turns out that it is your own observations and only your own observations that provide the 'evidence'.

What are you going to do when the pendulum swings back again -- they have a habit of doing that.

I think you should be a lot more concerned with the state of British literacy education than you are. Your equanimity on the subject is startling given your views on teacher training and your experience with the teacher still wet behind the years who has apparently made such a mess of Reception -- surely you are aware that there are schools all over the country that do not have the benefit of teachers with your many years of experience? Surely you are concerned that an unproven method is now the one size fits all method by which reading must be taught, that there will be testing and new management protocols to ensure compliance with the policy, and that in effect teacher training will be in the hands of companies promoting their own brand of SP through the 'improved' management practices that are envisioned for schools?

Are you not one little bit concerned that the children of Britain and how they fare in the reading stakes will be trotted out at the next election as evidence that the ConDems have either succeeded or failed?

Because this is what happens when research and evidence is ignored and the powers that be, whether at school level or in the political arena, go ahead with the method du jour.

Malaleuca,
The proposed phonics test may look like a simple, straightforward test, of exactly what children have been taught but conscientious, literate parents help a great deal with the teaching of reading at home, as I currently see my children doing with my grandchildren.

It is especially in the early years that parents take an interest in their children's learning, and learning to read more than anything else. Getting or not getting just 5 or 10 mins of regular individual help with learning letter sounds makes a huge difference.

It would be even more sad if someone blindly followed one piece of research while ignoring others that seemingly contradict the first