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

Words like starling and scribe are included because they aren't words most children will have met before.

The real words will include between 40 per cent and 60 per cent less common words, which children are less likely to have read previously. Less common words are included so that the majority of children will need to decode using phonics rather than rely on sight memory of words they have seen before.

They would have to provide some kind of extra support/intervention - until the dcs pass the test later on in Y2.

Taffeta that is bad teaching but all too often the children who most need teaching get short changed!!! It makes me so angry ... send them off with a TA because they are hard work

I am hopeful for change mrz, new teacher started last week and she seems excellent, but how much is down to individual teacher and how much is down to school policy about how interventions are managed?

I am a SENCO and part of the management team and have stopped individual teachers sending groups out of the classroom with a TA. All interventions are additional to class teaching not a substitute.

I agree, and have always had that in our Literacy policy - how can dcs make any progress if they miss existing core teaching?

I think I will start another thread about my issues with this so as not to hijack this phonics one. Thanks for your advice.

Crikey. 5 year olds not knowing "starling" or "scribe" . Any 5 year old who'd been read to would know those words.

Bonsoir I've had 5 year olds who don't know what a sheep or an apple are

Serious question here after looking at the pseudo words. My child (5) would struggle doing this test despite being in y1 and reading at at least the white level. She would fail because she expects words to make sense so would guess the nearest sensible word that looks like it. Will teachers explain not to do this?

Not that it matters too much I guess, as long as the results are not used to grade kids.

girlsinwhitedresses - careful, they'll be telling you your child can't read in a bit and is only guessing....see down the thread where I made the same point, and apparently my 5yo is also 'struggling' with phonics.

Have clicked the link but how do I find a sample of the words? HELP!

cabbage, on the right hand side under 'you may also be interested in' click on the first bullet. On the new page that opens scroll down to year 1 phonics sample materials and click on that.

Bonsoir, all I can say is that you have a very sheltered life!

At least one in five of my pupils, probably slightly more, come from homes where there is no literate adult to read to a child, let alone one with the time or inclination to do so.

Several children each year enter our school with virtually no spoken vocabulary except for very basic requests or comments ('Need wee' 'Gimme that' 'Mine!'). We work very actively to build every child's vocabulary and experience but I would say it is a small minority of our intake - possibly only one or two a year - who have been read to to the extent that you might think 'normal'.

GirlsInWhiteDresses, teachers will indeed explain not to do this.

Strikes me that this phonics check could be used to assign personality types to our DC based on how they approach it .

I agree, Indigo.

'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.'

It will help a lot of children, imo - nearly all those who struggle as it will be as clear as daylight those children who haven't 'got' decoding.

And 2-3 minutes practice daily with nonsense words, pretend words, robot words - call them what you will - will get children into the habit of understanding that little green men, or whatever, talk a load of codswallop. Does it take much imagination to make this exercise into a fun activity?

I can't imagine any teacher who is secure with their synthetic phonics teaching having any difficulty in administering this check.

my dd is fairly well read, can de code any word she is ort 10 (white) in yr1 and she was able to pick out th non words but funnily enough she asked me what scribe and starling where. they are words she has encountered but not much, even though she reads alot. So I would imagine for many children they can de code but donrt know the meaning of many words.

My ds at six had a huge spoken vocabulary but really really struggled to read, and guessed most words. As far as school was concerned he was just average, and he had no support (he was in top spelling groups despite completely refusing to learn his spellings because it was so painful for him - presumably the rest of the class were even worse at reading/writing?).

It was only when we had him assessed, found he was (as we suspected) dyslexic and got his synthetic phonics tutoring that he understood that reading was just about learning the code. Once he got the code under his belt his reading raced ahead, and he is now a total bookworm. But he had two years of being incredibly frustrated and then thinking he was stupid that were totally avoidable. He was in the year before phonics was mandated, and 'taught' using mixed methods. I would hate for any other child to go through his (and our) experience - if a simple test can show up the teachers that are not using phonics properly then I think it should be mandatory. We thought his reception year teacher was great at the time by the way.

teacherwith2kids - the point was that further down the thread "starling" and "scribe" were cited as examples of words that 5 year olds were very unlikely to have encountered. My point was that any 5 year old who had been read to (in English) would know them.

Many children arrive at my DD's school not knowing a word of French nor having any French-speaking in their household, so I have a very good idea of what it is like for children to be at school and not have the oral skills to progress. That was not the point here.

I thought mrz's list of words - otorhinolaryngologist, lapideous, mesoprosopic, fervescent - was a far better test of phonic skills for 6 year olds than the short made-up words.

Bonsoir, those words are simply too long with working memory capacity as the limiting factor rather than phonic knowledge - don't forget that DC's articulation speed is slower than adults!

pickledsiblings - I have ample evidence that they aren't! The French synthetic phonics method that my DD's school used (which was in fact developed for children with speech and language disorders, in the 1960s) teaches the children words as long as that after 6 months of learning to read and they do so very successfully. Long words are unavoidable in French pretty quickly. It is a mere question of learning to segment and blend longer words, which takes a little (but not much) practice.

Bonsoir we have children arrive in school with no language not because they have speech problems but because no one has bothered to talk to them. So they grunt and point it's sad but it is a fact of life and what many schools encounter.
It is therefore a red letter day when they read c a t and point to a cat.

Sure, mrz, I know that (one of my aunts is specialised in dealing with such children in England); that is not the point here though!

Coming back to the thread;

A few points that have raised themselves;

i) there should be some sort of specific dyslexia screening done in YR - this is a recurring theme that children with dyslexia and related educational needs are not being picked up quickly enough. Whether or not this test would do that, it should not be described as a 'test', and should be to screen, not to check up on teachers and pupils. I don't know if such a screening test exists, perhaps that is something that needs developing.

ii) children coming to school with speech and language delays and problems are not going to be helped by a 'phonics test'. And when there are significant numbers of children, either with speech & language problems, or with English as a foreign language, this sort of test can be very unhelpful. A friend of mine jacked in their job as a head, as he was utterly frustrated and depressed by the constant requirement to improve standards in the KS2 English Sats. His school demographic was a large number of Polish children arriving in Y5 or so, with no English. He pointed this out to the authorities, they said 'you must improve the number of children reaching level 4'. He said 'they don't speak English at all, 9 months before the SATS take place', they said 'you must improve the number of children reaching level 4'.

Not helpful really.

iii) of course teachers should be using the most effective methods to teach reading - the aim is to educate the children, not to pass tests though. I think a test administered at the point the child is deemed 'ready' would be good - with a maximum age cut-off - so a child who is doing well with their phonics could take it early, and if they got above a certain level, would not need to do it again (and presumably needn't waste time learning nonsense words in class, but could read a book instead). That would avoid the problem of able readers having to switch off their reading skills.

Lily, it is a Phonics Screening Check - not a test!

"Children with EAL did not perform significantly differently in terms of the percentage achieving the standard than those children
who are native speakers of English."

This is a direct quote from the pilot study.