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.

So I also disagree with your notion, mathanxiety, that it is pretty irrelevant which methods of teaching to read may be considered the best if 80% of people learn to read well enough whatever method is used. Because 80% of people are not enthusiastic and/or highly competent readers, a large proportion of them could actually be better at it, so they shouldn't be ignored just because 20% of people are particularly difficult to reach and are so bad at it as to be virtually unemployable. Maybe it is wrong to assume that what improves the situation for the 80% improves the situation as much for the 20%, but if it improves the situation, then it improves the situation. Along with other measures, surely that is a good thing?

Basically, mathanxiety, you are making a political argument that you think government money would be better spent elsewhere, where your statistics have shown it should make a difference. I respect that opinion. However, your statistics haven't shown exactly how to make the difference required, they've just highlighted the problems and there is limited data on successful remedies - probably as limited as the data on synthetic phonics being a successful remedy to anything. There just hasn't been a large-scale trial of any of the claimed remedies, just little projects all of which one could claim have been sullied by the fact that the people trying them are so committed and determined they will work (like the committed SP teachers who are convinced they are doing the right thing in their limited field, whereas in fact they may only be successful because they are good at what they do and so committed to it...).

(like the committed SP teachers who are convinced they are doing the right thing in their limited field, whereas in fact they may only be successful because they are good at what they do and so committed to it..)

I found that quite amusing, rabbitstew. I started with SP as an experiment because what I was doing clearly wasn't working and SP couldn't be any worse! Not exactly a wholehearted committment. Committment followed good results.

Mathanxiety said But until it is understood exactly what effective teachers are doing then ineffective teachers will bumble along producing unacceptable numbers of children who are not meeting benchmarks. There is no teacher proof method of teaching anything.

Some teaching methods are more robust than others at increasing student achievement. These methods have been analysed in John Hattie's ' Visible Learning". These effective methods -coupled with the optimum content - are doubtless being used by teachers like mrz and others whose students are demonstrably successful.

www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343084066&sr=8-1&keywords=John+Hattie+visible+learning

'What you are posting has nothing whatsoever to do with whether synthetic phonics is the most effective method of teaching people how to read.'
Are you trying to argue that the 19% of children achieving a 58% in English and Maths are all taught using mixed methods while the 81% achieving 78% are using SP?
Why do they tend to underachieve in Maths too?

Where have I said that 80% of people have no problems whatsoever with their reading skills?
(Granted, time after time many posts here have clearly demonstrated that even in this bastion of MC-ness, there are people whose reading skills let them down, but still, I didn't say that...)

'Basically, mathanxiety, you are making a political argument that you think government money would be better spent elsewhere, where your statistics have shown it should make a difference.'
Well yes -- government makes the decisions that result in one method of teaching reading being used in preference to another in schools. Government sets the benchmarks and administers the measurement tools and publishes an account of its investment for the public to inspect.

Government money is your money btw. It is not generated by the government's diamond mines. It comes from the taxpayer's paycheque. I am making an educational policy argument because educational policy affects what is done in the classroom, and where educational money is spent influences how effective it can be -- and the argument for SP in all classrooms is also an educational policy argument.

If the government, schools and training colleges are going to make a significant investment in SP on its own, within schools, without looking at whether that is the most cost effective thing to do with the money or whether a multi faceted approach would yield a better result for those who can be identified as needing it most (the 10% who achieve a 58% as a group), then a lot of that taxpayer money is guaranteed to be wasted. The government itself sees the big achievement gap as one that results in a drain on the Treasury: unemployable people are going to cost everyone more in the long run and in the short term too.

What works is tackling the behaviour of parents to ensure that children get to school ready to learn, plus good teaching once they get there. The quality of teaching, along with effective school administration and good leadership is the only factor that can be completely controlled and obviously this is one area where an investment is warranted. What good teaching and effective school administration looks like is something that can be teased out of the data. Look at 'Deprivation and Education' for research-driven suggestions about where money is best invested -- in a multi faceted approach that takes into account the home environment.

'I respect that opinion. However, your statistics haven't shown exactly how to make the difference required, they've just highlighted the problems and there is limited data on successful remedies'

Look again at the SPOKES and HCA programmes.

Several different programmes described using standard parameters here, including evidence base.

Another example, with referrals coming from social workers and other community based health professionals -- Incredible Years parenting intervention trial in Ireland with cost effectiveness worked out per child. (pdf)
Incredible Years programme teacher training component, Irish trial (pdf).
Barnardos (rather glowing) endorsement of Incredible Years programme:
'The Incredible Years Programme has been successful across 11 Sure Start areas in Wales (Hutchings et al, 2007). Indeed, the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) has recently funded the implementation and evaluation of the Incredible Years Programme as part of its Parenting Action Plan (WAG, 2005).'
(I thought WAG meant something else...)

Nurturing Parenting Programme described here with theoretical framework detailed. This is a programme that has been quite effective in cutting down violence, including corporal punishment, in the home.

'There just hasn't been a large-scale trial of any of the claimed remedies, just little projects all of which one could claim have been sullied by the fact that the people trying them are so committed and determined they will work (like the committed SP teachers who are convinced they are doing the right thing in their limited field, whereas in fact they may only be successful because they are good at what they do and so committed to it.'

Here we see the great British belief in the enduring strength of amateurism.
People have proved to be capable of training to the point where they can do their jobs really well, parents as well as teachers. Providing the support to keep them motivated should be part of the investment.

10% who achieve a 58%... = 19%

From a point of utter ignorance (not a teaching professional) I know that this is obvious as stated but this has everything to do with the home environment.

I don't think it has anything to do with the particular method (as long as the parents can grasp it)
I'm still surprised by the number of parents who don't think that reading and writing are skills that need to be practised, a lot, outside of the classroom.
I hear constant complaints about the smallest amounts of homework let alone the amount needed to produce happy confident readers.

Carry on

If only that were true PerryCombover. Many children with very supportive parents fail to learn to read despite daily practise. You just need to read MN to see this on a small scale.

Sorry to disappoint you, mathanxiety, but my experience of initiatives being brought out nationwide is that the level of training and commitment does not remain the same, so they always fail to meet their promise. Possibly because they cost so much and the political will isn't there to do it properly. You certainly won't get it done properly by the current government, which is intent on spending as little as possible on the bottom 20%. What you generally get with projects like the ones you propose is an awful lot of expense, but still not enough money and commitment to do it properly - because at the end of the day, the taxpayer is too self-centred and short sighted to agree to the massive commitments involved, so guarantees their failure.

And I think you are being disingenuous to ask where you have said that 80% of people don't have a problem with their reading skills, as that is avoiding the fact that you have no apparent interest in the reading skills of the 80%. You have in very strong words stated your lack of interest in that 80% and how well they read, as follows: "The majority of children learns to read. 80% is the majority. They learn to read using all sorts of methods. So to argue SP is a better method to teach the majority to read is redundant and not worth the time of Gove or Rosen. We could all just shrug and move on with our lives."

I've also noticed that projects brought out nationwide tend to be hijacked, where they are successful, by those who think they have a need, but actually they just need reassurance they are doing OK, and encouragement, and a few extra ideas. Those most in need do not put themselves forward and the interventions end up being done on the wrong people, because it is easier to do that than to do the work of getting the hard cases through the door. And then the money runs out...

Mathanxiety

 " Kesstrel, you changed the original meaning considerably. "

I disagree. As would anyone who looks at what you originally wrote.

 " The phrase 'in general' implies 'in most cases'. 
 The term 'average' implies there are children performing above and below."

Can you point me to anywhere where you used the phrase ?in general? or ?average? in the quotes I cited?

"What the average does not show is how far above and how
far below. Depending on the sample size, if enough students perform between those two points and an average can be found, then what you have is a meaningful number that can indeed be used in a serious discussion."

As you say, the average does not show how far above and how far below - something that is particularly important if you want to use a single variable like socioeconomic status to compare the performance of different groups on a particular scale. So why did you scornfully dismiss the post in which I pointed out that the All Party Report charts you have been repeatedly drawing our attention to did not include standard deviation and so were meaningless to support the conclusions you were drawing from them?

" In fact, the only sort of figures that can be used in a serious discussion
on a subject like this are statistics that have been produced using standard,
tried and tested means of extracting information. ...If you don't use
statistics, what you are using is your impressions. "

You have claimed repeatedly here that family intervention is the key to reading success for disadvantaged children. Yet the study evidence you have produced to support this is the Spokes and HRC trials. Did you read my earlier post pointing out how flimsy the evidence in the Spokes study is? And the HRC one is even worse ? the only measures of ?reading progress? involved were parents? own subjective impressions.

You seem to have a serious double standard where evidence is concerned.

Hmm, just read the last message - Spokes & HRC again!!! Since my comment on HRC is buried at the end of a very long post, I'll just repeat it:

Mathanxiety, did you read my earlier post pointing out how flimsy the evidence in the Spokes study is? And the HRC one is even worse ? the only measures of ?reading progress? involved were parents? own subjective impressions.

Yet you just accused people who don't agree with you of basing their ideas on "subjective impressions" rather than 'tried and tested research methods'...

Hulababy
Phonics provides a rudimentary start with learning to read but much less for learning to spell.

The hard part of learning to spell English, and which takes roughly 10 years for able and middling children but defeats nearly half even after all that time, is learning word by word when not apply the basic phonic rules. There is no way of predicting how to spell 'too - blue gnu shoe flew through to you two' except brute rote-learning.

At least 3700 common English words contain some equally unpredictable letters, from any, many to xylophone.

I also disagree that 80% of people have no problems whatsoever with their reading skills. Only a minority of people, even at the grammar school I went to, could read out loud in a way that remotely brought the text to life and demonstrated genuine understanding and appreciation

That's not reading; that's acting.

In your opinion, CecilyP. In my opinion, if you can't convey meaning when you read out loud, you can't read very well.

And how are your children going to pick up a love of reading if you don't make sense when you read to them?

Perhaps the sneering attitude of their classmates was making the poorer readers-out-loud nervous and more stuttery and stumbly. You don't get that from small children.

A very bright 16 year old, (think scholarship material) spelt parachute 'parashoot' - lots of other mistakes along similar lines. Is this down to learning via phonics?

I think it is more to do with poor visual memory, rather than how he was or wasn't taught. I have worked with many adult poor spellers, which has made me question how do I just know how to spell all these words, and I think it is because I can visualise them. I don't so much think that the young man in question is lacking anything - it is more that we, the good spellers, have something extra that helps us to spell correctly without too much effort on our part.

You do get it from small children - very few small children read with any expression, either. And nobody ever sneered, from my memory, since the majority read badly out loud.

Norham Gardens:

It is highly unlikely that a 16 year old will have been taught any phonics, or only the most rudimentary. A child that age will almost certainly have been taught by the whole word method. "parashoot" shows evidence of possible part-word combining; the child will have memorised the word "shoot" as a "sight" word, but will never have been taught that ch is a variant spelling of the sh sound.

There is very strong evidence that synthetic phonics produces much better results for spelling than any other method. However, it has only very recently begun to be taught in all schools, and in around 75% it is still not being taught effectively.

No NorhamGardens it's down to not being taught enough phonics

What is the difference between lacking something and having something extra? Is the difference whether a majority can do something versus a minority; or is it that something is considered an unimportant bonus if it is "something extra?"

Or, what I mean is, how do you decide you have something "extra" as opposed to someone else lacking something they ought to have?

How important is it to be good at spelling? And why?