The new Y1 phonics screening check

[SoundsWrite]

The government's new phonics screening check is to be launched in England in June.
The results of the test will be given to the parents of each individual child but each individual school's results will not be made public.
What is the view on Mumsnet? Do you think the results should be made public or not? Either way, why or why not?
You can find out more about this test by going to the DfE site: www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/pedagogy/a00198207/faqs-year-1-phonics-screening-check

This test will:

a) flag up some teachers who aren't teaching well
b) encourage others to teach better

This is a good thing.

Lily - you also have to remember you have never experienced the heartbreak of having a child being taught to read badly (from what you've said so far). It is the most soul destroying thing for your child to not learn to read.

Anything that helps children should be embraced. And this test will def help some children.

mrz - why the ? Obviously intelligence manifests itself in various ways. Ds2 took part in a study by our local uni, where he was assessed at age 3. He came out as top 1 percent, 'highly superior' was how they described it , couldn't say a word, was seeing a speech therapist, with significant speech delay.

Modelling getting things wrong is help. It's something school could have done with you.

Interventions don't have to be fancy packaged expensive stuff.

IndigoBell - yy, the important thing is that children are taught to read well.

However, the people reporting on the study who wrote to the Government did not think the report would actually 'catch' all the children who needed help, and may catch some who didn't.

And they suggested the whole thing should be rethought.

There's no point in a test which throws up wrong results, and then ends up with the wrong children getting support.

because nothing was ever done to support him because he was intelligent.

(sorry, am on catch up).

Modelling getting things wrong isn't what I would 'classify' as help, only because it wasn't an 'intervention', more part of our general parenting - we address all sorts of behaviours in our children.

Ds2's speech therapy was an intervention requiring help imo.

Just terminology.

No Lily my son could read well he didn't need teaching so no one recognised he had a problem.

My son was articulate, had great general knowledge, could do complicated calculations in his head and was obsessed by science ...but he couldn't write!

That is .

It does sound like the school failed your ds. And tbh, the other person I've really disagreed with irl on this test has a child with dyslexia. And if these children are not being spotted in class, then something does need to be done. I'm still not convinced this test WOULD flag them up, and could even be used as 'evidence' that they are doing fine, denying them the support they need. That is one of the issues raised in the report about the pilot.

Interestingly, the children who do best are those for whom English is an additional language, perhaps because native English-speakers do try to rationalise what they see into 'real' words.

Lily - nothing is 100% fool proof. Nothing will catch all children who need help

I'd be quite happy if it caught 98%.

And I don't care at all if it flags up 2% of kids as needing help when they don't.

Seeing as most teachers don't teach phonics well, asking them if they think the phonics test is any good is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.

Lily - most kids with dyslexia are not flagged up as dyslexic by Y1. And most kids with dyslexia would do very badly on this test in Y1.

That is exactly the point of the test.

I'd be worried if 2% were not caught and the fact that they received an acceptable mark on the test was used as evidence not to give them extra support. Which it would be.

mrz - what do you think is the reason your ds struggled with writing? Do you think it was lack of phonics knowledge?

certainly what I've seen from my kids, and from friends' children at other schools, phonics is king, they do SO much phonics.

(sorry, that sounded flippant mrz, I'm not minimising your ds' particular problems, am just interested as to what you think the mechanism for the problems with writing were, and whether you think this would have been different had such a test been in place then).

Way, way, way more than 2% kids are missed now.

What do you propose would catch 100% of kids with problems and 0% of kids without?

At least now though there isn't a mark on a piece of paper that can be used to prove to you that your struggling child doesn't need help.

What would catch kids who are struggling?

More integration between parents and school - if parents are concerned, teachers should address those concerns rather than offering reassurance, or brushing off concerns

More training for teachers in how to recognise dyslexia etc

Fewer 'targets' - more time actually spent with the kids

And if money would allow - a dedicated LSA in each infant class.

I just think that children are not all the same - even among my 4, who arguably should be more 'the same' than a random sample, they are really different, and they have learned to read in really different ways. A 'one size fits all' approach with no flexibility is not always a good thing in education.

If the test had been in place they would have realised he didn't know any letter sound relationships

Mrz, I just tried the test with my 4 year old and it is funny how they comment on what the nonwords sound like/remind them of. I guess that's the rationalisation that Bonsoir was talking about.

So, DD isn't 6 until August, and the test is for 6 year olds. When does she get her test, then? Oh, when she's 5. That's fair.

Another stick to beat the summer borns with. Unless there is some account taken of age that I have missed.

or something to help summer borns

I wish I could see it like that mrz. It depends on the school I suppose.

Not really - the school have to show that they have help in place for children who need it, based on the test result.

Re Maize's ref to my comment that teachers need less pressure on them and the general defence of good phonics teaching on this thread - I absolutely agree that good phonics teaching is an excellent way of teaching children to read and there should be no excuses for not applying it properly. But I do have a problem with the test. Like Bolero's daughter, my August born year I is a perfectionist and very shy and self critical. I suspect she would be very anxious to try and make sense of all the words. And and why on the sample paper do they have words like STARLING and SCRIBE? Can anyone out there on this thread honestly tell me their 5 yo knows what scribe means? My DD (if she did speak up at all) would say it was a nonsense word (while squirming with embarrassment no doubt.)

Yes but surely there is help and there is help. There is ticking boxes and doing things according to the rules, and there is providing caring support with enthusiasm and praise.

I mention this as my experience of DD's help so far has been a TA that shouts at her and gives not one iota of praise.

I tend to think that any 'tick the box' exercise is simply that.

Far better, rather than to look at a 'score' on a phonics test, would be to actually look at the child. Ok, that requires good teaching - but why not? Why can't we have fantastic teachers in the schools? There are a great many fantastic teachers - why can't we make sure ALL teachers are fantastic?

I don't think a test like this is going to improve the quality of the teachers fwiw. And will certainly mean less teaching for the children, and questionable results.

DD's teacher is fantastic. But she has 30 children to teach. So the TA gets involved.

BIG mistake. As said upthread, the children that really need the help are being palmed off on the TA for support groups etc ( which in our case is a real under performer , and indeed damaging in my view ), when they are the ones that really need a teacher's expertise.