Or it could be that 40% come from homes where there's an environment that makes learning close to impossible for the kids, so 30% failing would actually be v good
Absolute myth, I'm afraid. Children learn letter/sound correspondences and how to decode and blend at school, not at home. Granted, extra practice at home will help to consolidate their learning but poor home environment is not, in itself, a barrier to learning this simple skill.
Rather long, I'm afraid, but here is an extract from an article about a school which started using one of the well known SP prorammes:
Research in Reception 2010-2011
A Catholic Primary School designated for travellers of Irish origin, used the systematic, synthetic phonics programme Sound Discovery® to teach literacy to their whole Reception class, from September 2010.
The school has quite a high level of social and special educational need. There were 30 pupils in the Reception cohort, 18 boys and 12 girls. There were the usual vulnerable groups often believed to experience barriers to learning: boys, free school meals (FSM), summer birthdays, English as an additional language (EAL) and travellers. The school identified a slow-to-learn group who received catch-up teaching delivered as an intervention in a small group with their class teacher or class Teaching Assistant using Sound Discovery®. This was little and often teaching, to reinforce learning.
In September 2010, the Reception teacher assessed all the children on school entry. None of them knew any sounds and none could do any reading or spelling.
By Christmas 2010, the Reception teacher was reporting, ?a huge increase in the number of children being able to read and write?. The children learned quickly. In September 2010, 0% were working at alphabet CVC level or above. By October 2010, 63% were reading at alphabet CVC level or above, by December 2010 73% were reading at CVC level or above and by February 2011 97% were both reading and spelling at CVC level or above with 50% reading at CVCC level and above. Between 30% and 10% were reading at alphabet CVCC, CCVCC, consonant digraph and ?long? vowel digraph levels.
The composition of the catch-up group was interesting. There were three boys and 2 girls. Two of the boys had summer birthdays. One was also a traveller on free school meals and the other had significant behaviour difficulties with non-compliance. Both girls and the third boy were not in any other vulnerable group and were probably low ability.
Results in 2011
In July 2011 all 30 Reception children were assessed on the British Ability Scales II Word Reading and Spelling achievement scales. The results for the whole class and for individual groups are presented below in Table 1. (omitted here)
The whole class, the summer birthday children, the boys and the traveller achieved above average reading and spelling. The girls and the FSM children achieved above average reading and average spelling. The EAL and catch-up groups achieved average reading and spelling.
There is really no excuse for a large percentage of children in any one school (i.e. 10%+) not reaching the standard required in the Phonics Check