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

IndigoBell - "The point is to force teachers to teach using phonics - because some teachers have spent so long resisting all the other govt directives that this is the most effective way."

I agree! And since this is the aim, surely publishing the results to as wide an audience as possible will go the furthest in promoting it.

media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/assessment%20and%20reporting%20arrangements%20year%201%20phonics%20screening%20check.pdf
The phonics screening check is a new, statutory assessment for all children in Year 1.
The phonics screening check will take place during the week commencing 18 June 2012.
The phonics screening check is designed to confirm whether individual children have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. Children who do not achieve the appropriate standard should receive support from their school to ensure they can improve their phonic decoding skills. These children will then be expected to retake the phonics screening check the following year.

Thanks mrz. That link is what I was expecting. But I still can't imagine a teacher that is unaware of what the result of the phonics test will be for kids in their class. Perhaps we have really great teachers in our school (I think they're pretty average though ds1's teacher this year is great), but they do hear the children read at least once a week and I can't see even the worst of them saying, "Oh my goodness, littlemarigold has failed the phonics test, we need to give him some extra support!" I think it would/ should have come in before that and if it hasn't then it is more to do with funding/ other kids with greater needs who come first etc. etc.

I agree it would a very poor teacher who isn't aware that a child is struggling at this level.

My DS would have failed the test, and he has never had any extra help for literacy.

I think he started and finished Y1 on level 4 ORT and no-one was concerned. They were happy with his progress.

Has things changed so much in the last 5 years that this no longer happens?

No it still happens

Ds1 didn't learn to read using phonics - he really struggled with the idea of blending, but learned to read using more of a look and say method, he limped through the Jolly Phonics books, didn't really 'get' phonics until Y2 or 3, by which time he was a very well read boy with a love of reading. His brain is just wired up a bit differently.

And his spelling is much better than his sister's , who learned much more by the phonics method.

to be fair mrz I didn't get it at first but having been taken round the back of the bike sheds and been duffed up by feenie and mrz read some of the links posted in various threads, i now get it.

Indigo, I don't think the test would change that. If it's clear that level 4 ORT is low comparitively (I don't know as we don't use that system) and he still didn't receive extra help, then I'm not sure the test will make a difference. Why would it? What do you decide is a low score. Does it depend on how many people got even lower in the class? The school must have been aware of your ds's struggles, but for whatever reason they weren't on the case. Don't see how this test would change that.

MM - level 4 wasn't particularly bad.

The point was he was being taught via whole words rather than via phonics. He was never taught phonics at all. So there's no reason to believe his teacher knew which phonics he did or didn't know.

The test would have changed that. Because of this test he would have been taught phonics.

He still doesn't get phonics. If he sees a new word he has no idea at all how to read it. He's moving up to secondary school next year with huge gaps in his reading ability, which will hurt him more and more as he moves through school and university and is exposed to more and more complicated vocabulary.

IndigoBell - surely, though, if your son is a fluent reader, taking him back over the concepts of phonics wouldn't be that difficult or laborious (providing you, or someone you paid, had the patience to do so - I can well understand that school has other priorities if your son can read)?

I learned to read a very long time ago, and pretty much taught myself at home, before reading had been tackled at school (so jumped a class at school aged 4). I am a very good reader and have pursued an awful lot of education. Nonetheless, when it came to teaching my DD to read in English, I needed to get a grip on how to do so as I was going to be employing a tutor and buying a reading scheme. I must admit that I learned things about phoneme-grapheme correspondences that I did not know; I am also in awe at how quickly my DD can read, correctly, a very long word (in both French and English) that she has not previously encountered and I know that is down to the fact that she has been taught phonics and blending.

@ blackeyedsusan

Bonsoir - I would not get DSs co-operation to teach him phonics and therefore it would be very difficult to teach him.

DSs problems with phonics does not make it into his top 3 list of problems.

It doesn't even make it to his top 3 list of academic problems.

He already does vision therapy once a day and a neuro development therapy 3 times a day.

Therefore I can't find time to teach him his phonics and he'll have to take his chances.

And when he can't tell the difference between 'photosynthese' and 'photosensitive' I don't know what will happen - I guess then it might make it into his top 3 list of problems.

Yes, he may well get there himself... all I'm saying is that teaching phonics to a a child who can already read (or an adult who can already read) isn't that much work - providing you have cooperation, of course.

Indigo, my sister is the same. I'm not sure if she was taught phonics or not. I'm not sure if I was. I don't think so. (This was the 70's and early 80's for her). My brain is naturally more able to break things down, so my spelling is good. However, she has done really well. She loves reading! She got 3A's at A level. She got a 2:1 from St Andrews in psychology and she's a teacher. She still struggles with spelling (compared to me, but not other people) and reading new words - some of her names from Lord of the Rings were quite funny as she just takes a look at whole word and has a guess - still! But if it were important to get it right I think she'd try harder. She is a hard worker, probably because she had to work a bit harder than I did, but that's done her favours in the long run.

I am shocked to hear some teachers do not teach phonics - how on earth can a child learn to read. If a child knows the basic letter sounds they should be able to blend them to read any phonetically spelt word - surely this is better than just learning whole words.

I think you are all right to say that the test shouldn't really make any difference to those good teachers/schools as they will already know what level their children are at!!

I also should say I have really a positive experience of the use of phonics with DS1, he learnt his phonics at pre-school so he could read any phonetically spelt word, it was then easy to teach him the odd rules like silent 'e' etc once he knew the basics. There are very few words without rules to learn so he never really had to 'learn' many words.

On the other hand my niece who was 18 months older than DS1 struggled early on to grasp reading throughout year R as my sister-in-law tried to help her by using letter names rather than sounds so her progress was much slower as she guessed words or had to learn them rather than blending the sounds. She is in year 2 and can now read to an average level so all worked out ok.

At the pre-school I help out at we are starting to introduce parents nights where we can teach the parents what we do with 'Letters and Sounds' so they understand how they can help them at home when the DC are ready.

My son is Y1 would not pass the phonics test.
He would probably get all of Section 1 right but only half or so of section 2.
He's on blue books which I thought was "average" so how comes he'd not pass?

Should I be asking the school for intervention?

Blue ORT books? Or blue band books?

Are the books phonic readers? Or look and guess?

Blue band- Look and Say and phonic readers.

Blue band phonics books at this stage in Y1 is fine.

I don't think the pass mark for the phonics test is 100%

And he will improve between now and June. He Should go up another book band....

I think the pass mark is 34/40 which he wouldn't get right now as he doesn't know all of the sounds.
I guess he might learn some new sounds by summer but that's only 3 or so months away including the Easter holidays.

He'll make huge progress between now and then! Don't worry!

I just tried ds2 on the sample test, he got 2 wrong - one of which was 'jound' - and he did something interesting which was to try and make it into a 'real' word - so he said 'joined'. And tbh this is what an intelligent child will do, because so many words in English are not 'phonic', so they are used to working it out, but then using their knowledge of language to find the word.

In fact Jound could be J-ow-ned (as in hound) or could be J-oo-ned (as in Wound). Joined is clearly wrong, but is also a plausible guess I think, as it is pretty close.

All words in any language are phonic Lily but English is more complicated than some other languages. We do work it out but by using our knowledge of our language so you know that ow can represent ou in cow and oa in snow ...joined isn't plausible because ow doesn't represent the oi sound