Is phonics the best way to teach kids to read? Nick Gibb and Michael Rosen debate

[ElenMumsnetBloggers]

Last month all year one children in England had to take a phonics screening check, and phonics is being rolled out across the country as the way to teach children to read. But is this too prescriptive? We asked children's author Michael Rosen and Education Minister Nick Gibb to debate phonics. Read their debate about phonics as a tool for children to learn to read here and have your say. Do you agree with Nick Gibb or Michael Rosen? Is phonics the most effective way to teach children to read? Should we use several ways of teaching reading, or concentrate on phonics? Join the debate.

Hello Did anyone mention Plowden further up the thread? I am still trying to catch up with all the previous discussion whilst trying not to sit in front of a screen for three hours as this will shorten my life by 1.6 years, apparently.

Plowden was the bible when I trained in 67, anyone else remember child centred education? (Ducks ready for the flying bullets)

Feenie, do you honestly think that children whose families see physical and sexual abuse as normal are going to be able to focus enough to make progress?

Historical perspectives on reading.

'Lenses on Reading: An Introduction to Theories and Models'
is an interesting overview of the history of theories and also the history of testing.

Did I say that? But children who fail to learn to read using sight words only, or mixed methods are most definitely not limited to children with social and emotional problems.

Many teachers here refuse to see what you cite as barriers to learning, and help children learn to read and overcome those barriers to learning every single day. We don't use excuses - we teach them to read regardless.

When phonics becomes the norm in every school I think you will find on a national scale that those children will still be at the bottom of the heap, reading wise, just as they are now, and those a step above them will not change their position either.

There is an ironclad correlation between socio economic class and reading failure/school failure in the UK (within which there are other divisions such as the boy/girl divide). It could not possibly be that children from the bottom rungs of society only fail to read right now because of mixed methods, because clearly those in the middle and at the top successfully learn to read using mixed methods.

Or are you suggesting that mixed methods are only used in schools in deprived areas while SP is used exclusively in the areas where the other 80% of children learn to read?

Is anyone suggesting phonics will radically change the order of children on the heap, or just suggesting that there shouldn't be quite such a massive gap between those children at the top of the reading heap and those at the bottom, who can't even read????

I don't think that they will still be 'at the bottom of the heap', as you so delightfully put it. I teach many of those children, and most have the same reading attainment as more advantaged children because they are taught to read properly. And yes, in my school that means using SP.

because clearly those in the middle and at the top successfully learn to read using mixed methods.

That just isn't true. My own ds failed to learn to read using mixed methods, albeit with scant attention paid to phonics, with no daily phonics session and more attention paid to learning sight vocabulary. With proper phonics teaching he is now at a 2c.

The children I saw who failed to learn to read at the beginning of my teaching career were not always those with problems, no.

There is an ironclad correlation between socio economic class and reading failure - That's a very strong (and incorrect) assertion. Link please.....

If you look up the DCSF league tables you will see loads and loads of schools get all of their disadvantaged pupils to Level 4+

League Tables ordered by disadvantaged pupils achieving 4+

I'd just like to endorse what Feenie is saying -
The SP-type programme I use, with rigorous focus on decoding, has long-term research looking at students who had used the programme while young and then looking again 10 years later. The findings revealed that disadvanted children did just as well during their school careers as their more advantaged peer group.
At my kids school in Brixton all kids learned to read.
And, later, the fostered,and neglected
children did just as well with one-to-one SP as the more privileged children I taught.
There are certain primary Academies doing incredibly well in disadvantaged areas.
etc.etc.
It's the mixed-method muddle that around 20% of children can't handle. They need simplicity, focus, logic to get on the bottom rung. Why should beginner readers be any different from 5 year old children beginning the piano or violin, for instance? These children aren't bombarded with different strategies - there's no Michael Rosen- like figure mocking and jeering and protesting that beginners should be tackling complex compositions and 'guessing' the notes they don't know. or arguing that learning basic skills, from simple to complex, will harm childrens' chances of appreciating music in all its complexity later on.

As a slight phonics sceptic I nevertheless find your post quite convincing allchildrenreading Like your name too - is it specially for the thread ?

Good luck to you anyway in your mission !

Indigo --
Here's one for starters

From this report. a succinct description of the phenomenon:
'In the UK, social class has been a very longstanding analytic category associated with educational disadvantage, being related to propensity to stay in education after any compulsory leaving age, to educational achievement in examination results, and in entry rates to higher education.

Social class was in the UK traditionally categorised by the father?s occupational status: this has been amended in the past decade to a nine-point social class categorisation (the NS-SEC or National Standard Socio-Economic Classification), based on parental occupational code. There are persistent inequalities in educational outcome in the UK related to social class. However, these class inequalities also have a high level of correlation with family income. This is related to, but not only dependent on, occupational category.

Other factors of gender, ethnicity, disability and linguistic competence may also correlate with occupational category. Over the past century, there has been a consistent decline in the proportion of the population who are classified as belonging to the unskilled, manual and semi-skilled categories of employment: about 75 percent of the population were classified as in manual occupations in 1900, and about 35 percent in 2000 (Heath and Payne 1999). There has also developed a persistent group of the long-term unemployed.

The educational attainment of these groups tends to be below the national average in school, and more than 50 percent of a school?s performance is accounted for by the social make-up of its pupils. Butler et al (Butler et al. 2007; Webber and Butler 2007) found that in affluent areas 67 percent of 11-year-olds achieved level 5 in the national English tests and 94 percent of 15-year olds gained five or more passes at GCSE2 at grade C and above, while of children growing up in more deprived areas just 13 percent obtained level 5 in the national English tests for 11-year-olds, and only 24 percent of 15-year-olds achieved five-plus GCSEs at grade C and above (see also Reay 2006). Similarly, Archer and colleagues (Archer et al. 2003) reported that only 10 percent of entrants to University courses came from unskilled and manual backgrounds, while 58 percent were from professional and intermediate backgrounds.'

'because clearly those in the middle and at the top successfully learn to read using mixed methods.'
That just isn't true. My own ds failed to learn to read using mixed methods, albeit with scant attention paid to phonics, with no daily phonics session and more attention paid to learning sight vocabulary. With proper phonics teaching he is now at a 2c.

Feenie, your anecdote is, well, an anecdote. Unless you can prove to me that 80% of children who do learn to read in school do so using SP and not mixed methods, then your DS remains an anomaly, and the norm is for children to learn to read using all sorts of methods.

The educational attainment of these groups tends to be below the national average in school - 'tend to be below' is not an ironclad correlation.

Those schools league tables I pointed you to prove that you absolutely can break the link between being disadvantaged and attainment.

Unless you can prove to me that 80% of children who do learn to read in school do so using SP and not mixed methods, then your DS remains an anomaly, and the norm is for children to learn to read using all sorts of methods.

Math, if you're actually any good at maths you will realise you are talking nonsense.

The appropriate statistic you should be asking for is how many kids were taught SP properly and failed to learn to read as compared to how many kids were taught via mixed methods and failed to learn to read.

That is the only interesting statistic in the phonics debate.

As Indigobell says, it's common sense - look at the stats for KS2 tests and you will find plenty of schools in deprived areas which manage to teach ALL their children to read, regardless sometimes horrific problems. We manage to care for children AND teach them to read - they need both to escape.

I find your attitude very, very odd - instead of a thirst to find out HOW this happens, and why it doesn't happen in all areas, your answer (as usual) is to bleat 'show me extensive research immediately, I don't believe it'. A preoccupation with statistics and proof, rather that thought about the children to whom this really matters.

I'm going to go away now, and continue to do my job, which is making sure EVERY child in my school learns to read.

You carry on whining about anomalies, forgetting about the difference that these 'anomalies' make to children 'at the bottom of the heap'. Thank Christ you aren't an Education Minister, or nothing would ever get done. I can't stand Michael Gove, but at least politicians have tried to find out what is behind these anomalies, realising that they affect lives, rather than waiting for years of pointless research to overtake thousands of children STILL leaving primary school unable to read while people like you continue to make excuses as to why that is the case, instead of finding out how to actually make a difference.

I've known you lond enough to know that you begin on threads with an entrenched position, refusing to budge - ever. Get up off your arse and go into a school which teaches all of their children, disadvantaged or otherwise, to read and find out how they do it. They'll be eager to tell you. Go on. Then come back and tell me that what I and many other teachers do, day in, day out, is a fricking 'anomaly'.

Reading by Six - how the best schools do it

This report draws from the practice of 12 outstanding
schools in different parts of England to illuminate what
works in teaching children to read. The schools represent a
diverse range of communities but have striking features in
common. They are passionate in their belief that every child
can learn to read. Teaching children to read is at the heart of
their curriculum. Rigorous, intensive and systematic phonics
teaching underpins reading, spelling and writing. Teachers
and teaching assistants are well trained and highly effective,
and the schools are led and managed by able, committed
headteachers and reading managers who assure quality and
drive improvement.

I know you won't be interested - it's only 12 schools, so no doubt these are more 'anomalies'. But that's where successful practice begins.

If simplicity makes it easier for children to pick things up than mixed methods, then why has maths teaching gone the way of teaching 600 different methods to get to the same result, the majority of which are poor relations to the final approach? My children haven't needed the build-up to the quickest and best way of doing half of the procedures they have been put through and they have a cousin who has found being shown the same thing in various different ways unnecessarily confusing. Isn't that also a case of mixed methods, which teachers trying to teach a bit of all the ways of understanding maths, rather than finding the most appropriate method for the child in front of them? And slowing progress down for the most able in the process?

(stir, stir...).

Good point Rabbitstew, and [anecdote alert] at DS school they have decided to go back to using far less methods, as their statistics showed that the more able maths kids got on well with the variety while the less able found maths more and more confusing as they moved up the school. (More able and less able labels were based on their scores at KS2, coming in from several infant schools).

With regard to evidence, - we know that many teachers are telling 6-year-olds to guess words from pictures, first letter, and context. We also know that remedial teachers see many illiterate children at age 11 who are still trying to do exactly that as their main "reading" strategy.

We also know that the accepted view in the field of reading research psychology is that the original 1970s theory (about how people read) that these "guessing" word-attack strategies were originally based on has been completely disproven.

If doctors were prescribing a treatment which was associated with such serious long-term damage to a large minority of patients, which also had so little evidential backing, we would all rightly be up in arms. The justification that it was the "latest thing" in medicine back in 1980 when those doctors trained would not impress us.

IndigoBell and Feenie --

The correlation between socio-economic class and school failure is notable and longstanding and it is indeed ironclad, and it was even back in the days before whole word methods. Or are you trying to say that high social mobility with education as the catalyst is one of the defining features of British society?

Take a look at this All Party Parliamentary Report on Social Mobility -- of course if you don't believe statistics and can't distinguish between anomalies and norms you probably won't believe it...

It is very clear from the graph and diagram format exactly where Britain stands in relation to other OECD countries on social mobility p. 6; the link between school readiness at age four and its correlation to hyperactivity and family income (bottom 20% income = least ready for school, most hyperactivity) p. 12; difference between FSM and nonFSM students at 4, 11 and 16 in reaching benchmark standards, -- p. 7; UK cohort studies show social mobility is even worse now than it was a ew decades ago years ago, and it was nothing to boast about back then either; the Millenium Cohort Study revealed the discrepancy between the test scores of 3 and 5 year olds from the top fifth and the bottom fifth of the socio economic ladder 'The early cognitive assessments are quite strongly related to later academic attainment and eventual employment and class' ...

-- but I'm sure you will see it all very plainly for yourselves. The gross lack of social mobility in Britain was enough of a concern that this report was commissioned and published in the first place.

Sutton Trust report discussed here.

The correlation between socio-economic class and school failure

But you were talking about reading, Math - in fact, this whole thread is about reading. You are switching the focus now that it's been pointed out that you are being ridiculous.

For example, dyslexia would account for a fair proportion of the 20% (which is what you started talking about), if those children are not fortunate enough to go to a school where they get rigorous synthetic phonics instruction - the type which, among others, Dyslexia Action or Dyslexics.org.uk recommend, and which works well.

Dyslexia has little to do with the families with problems that you began this point by referring to.

Reading is key to every single other subject. If it wasn't, why would you be so passionate about teaching it effectively?

Reading is not an end in and of itself.

Doing it well is the key to succeeding in the whole curriculum at both primary and secondary levels, and hence to university access, which is where the big divide in society becomes so marked. Children who do not have a chance to get into university or the equivalent of a poly at the end of secondary will not enjoy social mobility. Children who do not read well enough to push into third level are doomed to follow the footsteps of their parents, who as things stand are far more likely not to have succeeded in school themselves, and far more likely to be low earners even if they are lucky enough to be employed.

Dyslexia absolutely does not account for 'a fair proportion' of children failing at school in Britain.

Please look again at the Parliamentary Report, and try to explain to me why more British children from the bottom 20% of society have dyslexia than Danish children from the corresponding socio-economic stratum.

(Hint to save you from frying your brain -- Dyslexia has nothing to do with the overall picture of school failure. Class/income level/level of parents' education are the key factors)

Reading is key to every single other subject. If it wasn't, why would you be so passionate about teaching it effectively?

Well, du-uh.

Reading is not an end in and of itself.

I didn't say it was. I said that's what you were debating. You have taken it off inot all compassing education. Stick to the original point you made - that's the point I answered.

Dyslexia absolutely does not account for 'a fair proportion' of children failing at school in Britain.

I didn't say it did. I said that that kind of reading difficulty probably contributed to a fair proportion of the 20% who fail to read - again very specifically answering your point. From that you have somehow extrapolated that that means they are failing at school.

Please look again at the Parliamentary Report, and try to explain to me why more British children from the bottom 20% of society have dyslexia than Danish children from the corresponding socio-economic stratum.

Why? I didn't say that the bottom 20% of society have dyslexia - I said the opposite.

The 20% of children who fail to read are NOT confined to children from deprived areas. THAT is my point. Look at the reading results of schools and you will find that there are some leafy lane schools who don't teach all their children to read and some schools in deprived areas who do. You can do that yourself with your googling skills, even if you can't use your common sense. Stop waving around daft papers about young people who fail to go to university. It's a PHONICS thread, about READING, and THAT'S what you and I were debating.

"Dyslexia is a difficulty with language processing that is independent of intelligence, school experience, social, economic or emotional factors. A student with dyslexia may:"
suggesting that more children from the bottom 20% of society is contrary to the definition of dyslexia

Feenie, if words are confusing you and it seems they are look at the All Party Parliamentary Report. It is all presented in graph and diagram and bullet form.

'The 20% of children who fail to read are NOT confined to children from deprived areas. THAT is my point.'

Yes I know that is your point, and you couldn't be more mistaken. Statistics do not lie. You need to learn to differentiate between individual examples from isolated studies or pilots, and national statistics complied by professionals and accepted by policy makers. Those policy makers have decided, based on those statistics, that SP is one prong with which to tackle the deeply ingrained societal issues that result in failure to thrive in the educational setting for 20% of British children. The link to socio-economic status and school failure is accepted as axiomatic; the numbers are irrefutable.

I am not talking about individual schools in disadvantaged areas doing a fantastic job or individual schools in leafy burbs doing a woeful one and neither are the policy makers. Those schools are the exceptions that prove the rule. Believe it or not, national trends are identifiable and can be quantified. National statistics may be contradicted by the odd individual example, but they are based on overwhelming numbers and results. It is the overwhelming trends that concern policy makers.

Dyslexia is a red herring in the discussion of who fails to read. Overwhelmingly, children in the bottom 20% socio economically fail to read adequately or at all and this makes school failure inevitable. Overwhelmingly, 80% of children from higher strata learn to read adequately. This makes school success much more likely.

'It's a PHONICS thread, about READING, and THAT'S what you and I were debating.'
1 -- Reading does not happen in a vacuum. Reading is taught in order to ensure children can access the whole curriculum as they progress through school.

2 -- There can be no productive phonics thread or discussion about reading that doesn't take into account the 85% of a child's life that happens outside of school. There are absolutely incontestable links to a child's home background and his performance in school, and the major correlation to school failure is socio-economic class, not mixed methods of teaching reading, or any other factors.

1. -- There can be no solution to the problems children have in learning to read unless factors associated with that other 85% of a child's time are taken into account.

1. -- There is no single magic solution in the shape of one reading programme or another that will tackle the deeply entrenched issues facing the stubborn 20% of children who fail; a successful programme will have as many facets as there are interrelated issues.