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

different rates of learning and differing learning styles (if they exist) are not an excuse for offering poor quality teaching of reading.

In a school with lots of mobility it is even more important to ensure best practice, no?

I think they need to start with universities and ITT
I very rarely speak to a teacher who has had adequate phonics training as part of their course. Many say they had one lecture. Others say they were taught then go on to demonstrate mixed methods!

I find it extraordinary that there isn't more time devoted on ITT courses to the underpinnings of basic skills.

There is something very weird about teaching in this country.

'Creativity' is valued above all else. They are expected to re-invent the wheel every lesson rather than follow anybody else's plans.

I don't know why this culture exists. I presume it's just the pendulum swinging too far in one direction.

However, what it means, is that every teacher up and down the country is inventing their own lesson every day for teaching kids to read. Their main (but not only) complaint about schemes like Read, Write, Inc is they tell them what to do!

While teachers believe 'following plans' is bad and 'making it up myself' is good, you have the situation we're in now where there are many, many, many effective schemes, including free govt ones explaining how to teach kids to read - and the teachers just won't follow them.

So, yes ITT needs to improve. Dramatically. (Not only for phonics, but also for SEN :) ) - but also the attitude they are teaching needs to change. Their needs to be more of a balance between coming up with ideas which will suit your individual class - and following proven methods.

Also for maths, IndigoBell. There are ways of teaching children basic maths skills that are so much more effective than others.

I am also quite at the amount of work English teachers seem to do as compared with the French teachers at my DD's school. I certainly don't think the French teachers are perfect, but they don't think that they have to spend time inventing lessons and, to a large extent, they are right! Teachers here arrive at school with the pupils at 9am and leave with the pupils at 4.30pm and go out to lunch with their colleagues for 1.5 hours in the middle of the day.

Umm, sounds like mrz's concerns about teacher bashing were quite accurate.

It makes absolute sense that university is the correct place to start. Though this doesn't address the difficulties amongst teachers who have already qualified.

Did anyone see Ruth Miskin's 'Last Chance Kids' about synthetic phonics at a school in Barking, I think, a few years ago? If nothing else, it was a fascinating insight into all the - very real - block to effective teaching in some schools. It's daft to say that teachers only need pen and paper - many children don't have books at home or parents/carers who can read. They clearly need more from school that those who have these.

My DDs are both too old for this test - so possibly I'm viewing it differently.

DD1 didn't have much in the way of phonics teaching - more searchlight method mrz described. Wasn't very successful really adn still struggles (now Y4). DD2 definitely had phonics training and all sorts of actions for words as well from a very dynamic new YR teacher fresh out of a University PGCE training and successful NQT year. DD2 absolutely thrived on this method and was definitely reading by the end of YR (better that DD1 by end of Y1). Unfortuantely with 2 different teachers/ methods and 2 different children I can't be certain if the difference in attainment is down to method or down to different abilities of my two DDs.

My feeling about this test is that parents should know the results. I agree with those posting that detecting problems early and working on that (in school and at home) would be beneficial.

Wider publication of results is difficult - mainly because it seems to me every year is different and this could potentially disadvantage schools from poorer catchments or areas with larger non-English speaking parent populations. I'm not certain it will change anything to have these results widely circulated. However, schools performing poorly could be held accountable by DfE/ OFSTED to show how they have addressed poor performance and required to provide evidence of intervention to support reading in Y2, Y3, etc...

In our case the primary waited until Y4 to assist DD1 with reading. It's working and DD1 is making good, steady progress. Interestingly this support is being handled by a TA, not a teacher. The TA is fantastically good at this (I'd say she's the best teacher DD1 has had so far out of all staff) - the TA encourages a spirit of competition and carefully guides weak readers to better decoding of words (individual and group work), help with reading out loud (a real issue for DD1) and stearing them to appropriate book selections. I can't help but wonder where DD1 would be if this had started in Y2.

I think that any teacher bashing on this thread is actually by teachers, rosebud05 - and I think the comments are justified.

RoseBud - hundreds or thousands of schools are using Ruth Miskin's program Read, Write, Inc - certainly the 3 schools my kids attend all use it.

And most schools which use RWI are teaching about 95 - 98% of kids to read within 2 years - regardless of student mobility and EAL etc.

(in my DDs year she was the only kid that didn't learn to read)

RWI is fairly expensive. But what is more important for a school to spend their budget on than reading?

You don't have to buy RWI though to teach phonics properly. Although a pack of 10 black and white RWI books only cost about £8.00 from amazon. We are not talking a lot of money to get phonics books into schools.

And you can download any number of free phonics books.

mrz's school doesn't use any commercial scheme at all.

A lot of schools just don't prioritise teaching reading.

You can have as many excuses as you like. Teaching 95% of kids to read is easily attainable for any school that wants to. Teaching 100% of kids is incredibly hard - although some schools do still manage it.

Just found sample test and got DD (year 1) to read them. She read them through correctly and then said it was the silliest list of words she'd ever seen and whoever wrote it can't spell and if she gave a list like that to her teacher she'd get lots of crosses and an extra spelling lesson

She's not going to be happy to be confronted by the actual test

The teacher however would have told her to expect some nonsense words.....

So did I Indigo but it didn't convice her that the person who wrote the list could spell

Indigo, I'm not 'making excuses'.

My point is that unless there are resources to intervene with children who 'fail' phonics tests, they serve a political rather than educational purpose.

Okay, just did the test with reception aged dd. She read through them easily, though asked why there were words that didn't mean anything.

In conjunction with teacher assessment, I think this will be useful but I fail to see the benefit of publishing results.

Am by the dcs who haven't ever come across the nonsense words - it's a standard strategy to check decoding skills. They are 'alien' words in our school.

If children are not picking up phonics by Y2 (and I would say much, much earlier - Reception, ideally) then someone needs to be picking this up - this is an absolute priority for resources.

I'm puzzled too , Feenie. I mean it's not as if children understand every word they read, is it? I'd never heard of a Grinch until I read Dr Seuss and children's literature is peppered with the names of things and people that children have never heard of or seen before.
As you say, it's a good check on skills and code knowledge.
It's also heartening to hear that a number of people have tried out the check on their own children and found that they could do it - it seems, mostly, with ease. I wonder if this says quite a lot about the dedication of contributors to the forum to their DD/DS's education because, out of 8,963 children from 300 schools who took part in the pilot, only 32% passed.

I agree, I would also expect most children to have played the trash or treasure game from Letters & Sounds in some form www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3-games.html phonicsplay.co.uk/DragonsDen.html
we use www.yellow-door.net/ragtag-rhymes which are very Dr Seuss like.

I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but I do love Michael Rosen.

michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/exciting-new-test-dfe-speaks.html?spref=tw

See, I don't think that Michael Rosen post is funny at all. He just sounds like someone who doesn't understand what he talking about.

I like Rosen's 'Word of Mouth' prog on the BBC very much. I've also long used his books to read to my own children for pleasure and to teach children to read (usually for fluency, as well as for pleasure - mustn't forget the pleasure part of it!). The trouble is that when it comes to understanding what phonics is all about, he hasn't got the first clue. That's a real shame because he's a bright boy and he's been told many times how poor his understanding of phonics; yet he still doesn't bother to educate himself and keeps coming out with the same rubbish he's once again spouting in the blog posting Rosebud linked to. He needs to go on a phonics hunt.

Michael Rosen makes a habit of denigrating synthetic phonics without actually understanding it.

literacyblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/wrong-stuff.html

It's odd that people like Michael Rosen are prepared to display their ignorance in public.

Out of interest is it possible to be a very fluent reader in Y1 and fail the phonic test when it came to the made up words? In other words if you hadn't really grasped phonics but could read (at 100% accuracy) a chapter of James and the Giant Peach or any other chapter in a given book pitched at a similar level? If you had learned via mixed or other Look & Say type methods?

Cortina - if a child can't read a made up word how could they read roald dahl with 100% accuracy? His fiction is full of made up words.

It is possible for adults to believe a child reads well and for them to not get 100% on the phonics test - that'll be because they don't really read as well as the adult believes.