New phonetics screening tests; testing the use of the method, not the skill of the 6yr old reader surely?

[yummymummyreally]

So why is the Department of Health so obsessed with testing young children's reading "method", rather than their ability to read... Or, or I don't know, maybe checking if they have an interest in stories, are engaged with the written word? But no. The new phonetics screening tests for 6yr olds check if they are specifically decoding words with phonetics, rather than using other methods like "context" for example.... Gggrrrr. I don't understand this!

What do you think? Is method that important?

YMR - there are lots of dangers around thinking a kid can read well, when they can't read phonetically.

Both mrz and me have posted numerous times how sad we are that we gave up on our own kids learning to read via phonics.

My DS1 is in Y6, and is on the G&T register for reading, and reads heaps and heaps etc. But he doesn't know phonics. If he sees a new word he just guesses at it and keep on reading. It doesn't appear to hamper him at all - but it does. He doesn't realise that word he read is the same word he knows verbally.

And obviously it also effects his spelling.

My DS and MRZs DS both have amazing memories, and are actually able to remember the 'look' of hundreds of thousands of words. But it certainly is a very risky strategy that we both regret getting to this stage.

So, really, really don't get sucked into thinking it doesn't matter how a child can read. We're not talking about who gets through to stage 10 reading books fastest - we're talking about raising literate children who can (eventually) read university level texts - and spell reasonably well.

It is far too early in the infants to judge the success or failure of a child learning to read.

"A vast swathe of teachers (not all of course) don't know their arses from their elbow. It attracts some frighteningly incompetent people whose capacity to teach children is further compromised by the staggeringly ineffectual teacher 'training' they then undergo."

moondog - I am sorry to say that I agree wholeheartedly with this statement! As a child, I was myself relatively protected from incompetent teachers (two private preps, grammar school and then European School - never exposed to the general non-selective state school system) but since having children myself I have gained much greater understanding of the role of teacher (in)competence as opposed to pupil potential in the great clamber up the ladder of educational achievement. There are more thick teachers than thick pupils...

I wasn't taught phonics at school in any way shape or form. I was always an extremely able reader. (I do understand the methodology etc).

I wonder if I would pass this phonics test today? :)

Could it penalise a great reader with fantastic comprehension and good spelling? Just wondering. I am thinking of 6 year olds that can race through the more difficult Roald Dahl's chuckling along with 100% accuracy and deep understanding. If they 'failed' this test would it hold them back in any way?

If they can read the BFG then they can certainly read phonetically because it contains loads of made up words.

If you can look at 'hild' and decide how to pronounce it - then you can read phonetically.

People like Dolfrog and my DS and mrz's DS look at 'hild' (or any word they haven't seen before) and don't have a clue how to pronounce it. They literally can't say it.

Most people who haven't been taught phonetically work out the rules for themselves - but the point is not all do.

The stats say (roughly) we're talking about the difference between teaching 80% of kids to read, or teaching 95% of kids to read. So a huge difference.

If you don't know one of those 15% who would have benefited from better early years teaching it is hard to appreciate the importance of the issue.

All the schools in the Ofsted report reading by six use phonics:

The best primary schools in England teach virtually every child to read, regardless of the social and economic circumstances of their neighbourhoods, the ethnicity of their pupils, the language spoken at home and most special educational needs or disabilities.

A sample of 12 of these schools finds that their success is based on a determination that every child will learn to read, together with a very rigorous and sequential approach to developing speaking and listening and teaching reading, writing and spelling through systematic phonics. This approach is applied with a high degree of consistency and sustained.

Not teaching a child to read costs far, far more, then the cost of administering a test.

The only reason we need a test is because the gap between the best schools and the worst schools (in terms of teaching reading) is huge - and the govt is doing everything it can to encourage the worst schools to learn from the best schools.

A lesson the bad schools are very stubbornly trying not to learn.

Only 27% of schools are using phonics? I had no idea. Lordy me, that really does me.

I am spoilt, then, by dds' school - they are very good at teaching phonics and, as a bonus, the EYFS leader is child centred/flexible enough to allow the other methods some kids seem to automatically prefer. Without giving up on the phonics, obviously, but in order to support individual children.

I do understand the need for the test, in view of those statistics - it was hard to understand in the context of the only schools I'm familiar with.

I'm not sure where the 27% comes from, but only 32% 6 year old who took the pilot test reached the expected standard. So that means about two thirds of children are not decoding adequately for their age, which suggests there must be a fair amount of sub-optimal teaching.

72% of participating schools reported particular difficulty with novel but phonically regular words. This is a strong indicator that the children are not able to decode.

Edith, the teaching is only sub-optimal if what is being tested is what is being taught. The other 78% could be excellent sight readers for whom made-up words present a huge problem, understandably.

I think that the test is a good way of making sure that phonics are taught systematically which is, I presume, the whole point of it.

Indigobell - what you say makes a lot of sense, and i will ensure we dont ignore phonics when memory starts to build up and my daughter starts to memorise.

you also make a good point about the costs of not reading against the test costs.

what i found interesting is working out how i decode as a adult prolific reader. And when i consider it i realise that i sound it out first...almost subconsciously. i can say the word without knowing what it means. i guess thats what must come first, then finding out the meaning comes next....

piclkedsiblings: yes of course sight readers will fail a phonics decoding test!

As most schools claim to use phonics methods, and as the test is meant to represent the minimum expectation (not the maximum to aim for) then what other explanation is there other than sub-optimal teaching?

**pickledsiblingsMon 12-Dec-11 12:22:57
Edith, the teaching is only sub-optimal if what is being tested is what is being taught. The other 78% could be excellent sight readers for whom made-up words present a huge problem, understandably. I think that the test is a good way of making sure that phonics are taught systematically which is, I presume, the whole point of it. **

For an excellent sight reader, every word they haven't read before presents a problem not just the made-up ones. While they are still reading aloud, you can tell them the new words, and they will remember them. For a phonics reader, it is only some of the words they have never heard before that present a problem. Which you them help them with, and it often means they can then read a whole swathe of similar words.
As soon as they get onto silent reading, or reading instructions in maths questions, then the "sight reader" is at a huge disadvantage, despite many of them seeming to be more fluent when reading aloud.

Another phonics fan here.
I taught my son when he showed an interest and followed Jolly Phonics at home. YR was consolidating and building for him. Now in Yr1, building more phonic awareness.
His teacher has said that the way he guesses how to spell things - not always correct, but phonetically logical shows he has a great understanding. He's very good at reading and I think phonics has most definitely helped.

The fact that only 27% of schools teach phonics systematically could be an indication of nothing other than a time lag between research and practice. The Govn is apparently looking to further decrease that time lag by insisting on the phonics check. All good IMHO.

It isn't so much that 27% of schools are teaching phonics, so much as the remaining 73% (and we are only talking about the schools in the pilot, though these figures could reasonably be extrapolated to English schools as a whole) still teach 'other strategies', even if they claim to teach phonics.

We know, from the failure of the old National Literacy Strategy (which promoted 'other strategies) to teach at least 20% of pupils to read competently, that phonics + other strategies is not as effective as phonics alone. So the fact that nearly three quarters of schools still appear to be doing it is worrying for the future of many children (one in five being far from insignificant...)

Schools/teachers should be assessing pupils phonic knowledge regularly so they know what children know already and what needs to be taught next so this national test shouldn't be necessary. The fact that it is speaks volumes.

pickledsiblings The Rose Report was published in 2006 and Letters & Sounds the following year (which included an example of the test to be used in Y1) so schools should have been using phonics for over 4 years if they weren't previously ... they certainly have had time.

Just long enough for the first cohort of phonics only BEds mrz . I do think it takes time for these changes to move through the system though, it's not as if it was accompanied by a whole curriculum change which would at least have given some impetus. A change of Government won't have helped either.

A change of Government won't have helped either.

A change of government is helping enormously! The last government was very lukewarm about phonics teaching and even promoted the 'look & say', mixed methods intervention, Reading Recovery, at the same time as accepting the findings of the Rose Review and introducing Letters & Sounds. At least this government, for all its many sins, is actively insisting that phonics is taught properly.

Except the student teachers we are getting through have not been taught phonics AT ALL by their university!

A friend who teaches the phonics input for a local university gets two afternoons (in total) to teach BEd students how to teach reading ... PGCE students get one

''Just long enough for the first cohort of phonics only BEds''
The majority of ITTs are still not teaching students to use synthetic phonics:

In his article, 'The Education White Paper: a CPS Postnatum' (Nov. 2010), Tom Burkard wrote that, '(T)eacher training was first identified as the major obstacle to the implementation of effective practices in the 1996 report, Reading Fever. In an unpublished CPS report that was sent to Nick Gibb just prior to the general election, we suggested that new arrangements were needed to train teachers to use synthetic phonics effectively. We included a survey of reading lists for 46 initial teacher training (ITT) courses, which revealed an overwhelming hostility to this method, and indeed a profound disagreement with the coalition?s overall vision of educational reform.

www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/ITT%20reading%20lists%20Jan%2010.pdf
Burkard: 46 ITT reading lists.

In 2009, a government survey showed that less than half of the teachers who responded rated their training in preparation to teach phonics as good or very good.

and having a NQT who describes herself as a phonics expert and thinks capital letters represent the letter names and lower case the phoneme I'm not convinced self assessment is reliable ...