DS1 failed the Year 1 Phonics test. Is he alone?

[AnnieMated]

Shocked and upset actually. Trying my hardest not to be, but he's a pretty good reader and is finishing ORT level 6 and reading fluently with no trouble.

He got 28 out of 40 and the pass mark is 40.

What I most concerned about is that the school didn't even inform parents their children were going to be tested, we just got a bland, round-robin letter today in their book bags with the results.

Anyone like to reassure me? Don't want to ask the other mums from the school but will have a chat with the teachers tomorrow if I can...

strandednomore but it isn't a one size fits all philosophy. It's teaching important skills ... or would you expect your child to do calculations before they knew the relationship between the numeral and the quantity it represents?

Hopefully it will become more of a routine, useful one-tool-in-the-tool-box kind of assessment, rather than The Test it appears to be atm...

It will be when parents and teachers stop being so hysterical about it

I am certain that late July born DS would have failed a Yr 1 phonics test.
Reading all fell into place very suddenly and very thoroughly some time in Yr 2.
He has just achieved a 5a in his Yr 6 SATS.

Shrug to phonics testing.

My summer born (premature) son's reading fell in place before he started nursery but I suspect he would have failed the Y1 phonics test too Blu. He achieved a L6 in reading in his SATs

Pity there wasn't a phonics test when he was 6

Hi,

I was really upset today when my son came home and had failed also, 26/40. He is reading so well and spelling so I was shocked. I came home and went online and sat with him through a mock test. He still failed. There are some tricky words on there that confused him as to whether it was right or wrong. Mostly he got all the obvious ones. One he failed on was rusty he did not recognise this as a true word, probably because it is not a word we use often. He always gets his word bag correct that he gets every wednesday , and is doing very well. I have now decided there is no point in being upset , all we can do is work on it together , although I am 50/50 with phonics , I think it can be good but also confuses the children sometimes. Lets try not to be upset they have along way to go yet !!

One problem I have with the whole 'everything is phonics' is that there really are some words that don't follow the phonic 'rules' and if you have a child who is very rule-centric, this can really freak them! And it annoys my logicality too!

Eg One and Two.

Stressed vowels often become diphthongs over time (Latin bona → Italian buona and Spanish buena), and this happened in the late Middle Ages to the words one and once

Two was originally written twa

Mine would have failed am sure. He's didn't start to read until Yr2, but now is apparently reading at L4 and has just finished yr3. Phonics definitely helped him, but it just took a while..

At my DS's school 60% of children failed (including DS). Really not pleased with the test itself - have you seen it? We were given it so that we could see what our children had failed at. It's a long list of words - many of which are nonsense words. My DS, like a lot of others, had tried to make the nonsense words make a proper word. The teachers were not even allowed to point out words to them on the page. Each child was estimated 9.5 minutes - but it took 2.5 days just to do one class! Complete waste of time. Tells me nothing and the school nothing. DS, like so many others, is doing reasonably well. Can read at Level 6 ORT, is starting to be interested in reading while out and about (helped by Moshi cards ) - what more could I/he want?!

We had a letter last night saying 65% pass rate at our school. Is that unusual or average?

I was speaking to a friend last night about this test. Her ds and his friends all scored less than 10.

DS's teacher told me unofficially that they got a 80% pass rate; DSis told nephew's school was 56% pass, so on a very small sample (!!) 65% doesn't seem that unusual but plenty of scope to improve?

Mrz: interesting that you say 'booklet'. The one that my DS sat was just 1 page with no instructions. Or at least that was what I saw. But a 5 year old who has spent the whole year trying to make words make sense and is then faced with words that deliberately don't make sense is going to get confused. I would be confused - and I work with words for a living!

Something went very wrong if that is genuinely how your child was exposed to the screening kw13 The booklet was quite well produced, only 4 words on a page large print - clear visuals to show which words were nonsense.

here are some images of the booklet pages which the children used for the screening.

kw13 I administered the check and it was a ten page booklet with 4 words per page all the words on the same page were real or all were pseudo (not mixed so as to confuse the child) and the teacher's instructions were to tell the child "these words are real/made up"

so got my daughters school report today and shes below expectation in every subject and she only scored 2 on the phonics screening test, 2 out of 40 is really bad.

i feel like ive failed her so bad i dnt know what to do and i feel like school telling me in the whole of year 1 she has only learned 2 phonics words.

does this test even matter and is it a big deal towards her grades later on in school x x

I know this is a zombie thread. It might be worth starting a new thread.

Has the school organised SEN support for your daughter? A school report should not contain nasty surprises. She is clearly struggling. It might help to get your child's hearing and eyesight tested.

All the phonics check is identify children who need help with learning to read. It doesn't affect future grades.

It isn't a test it's a screening check to identify those children at risk of future reading difficulties. With a score of 2/40 I imagine she is already struggling? So yes it is important.

It really isn't about teaching phonic words (ever word is a phonic word) it's about teaching the knowledge and skills that enable your child to read (and spell) any and every word they might meet in the future.

I would be asking the school what they are going to do to support your child next year.

I will definitely ask the school for plan.
Also I wouldn't leave it during the summer. Can you help her a little bit everyday with simple reading/maths work?

The phonics test tests phonic decoding. This is one skill children can employ to help them read, but it is not reading.

If you child is happy reading then they are obviously able to use a range of skills to decode words.

Phonics is a means to an end. The end is reading. If you're child is getting to the end point via a slightly different route that's ok.

I don't think this is the case you can say "I wouldn't worry too much".
2/40 means she didn't grasp phonics at all for last 2 years. She needs massive support.

The phonics check is brilliant and year 1 is not too early. It has forced schools to identify children who struggle with reading so support can be put in place. A bright child with dyslexia was often able to fool teachers into thinking that they were a good reader. The consequences of reading difficulties not being picked up was that the child failed to obtain decent GCSEs in later years.

I wish the phonics check could be done in a way that did not label children as failures at five. My daughter was very nervous when she did a phonics check last year. I would rather that the phonics check was a teacher assessment rather than an official test.

The phonics test tests phonic decoding. This is one skill children can employ to help them read, but it is not reading.

Codswallop!