I admit to wanting to open people's minds to the possibility of spelling reform. – The media have of course been interested in me mainly because of that. Some of the phonics fanatics are aware of it and use it as something to undermine the credibility of everything i say.
But i post on here because i also know a great deal about the in and outs of English spelling (possibly more than anyone else alive), because i spent many years taking a really close look at them. I do so, because i think that my findings are highly relevant to discussions about the teaching and testing of reading and writing,
The fact that the 43 English sounds are spelt with 205 graphemes is clearly one of the reasons why learning to read and write English is more difficult and takes much longer than in languages which use fewer. – This is a complete no-brainer: learning to read and write with 205 graphemes inevitably takes longer than with just 50 (the European average).
But most parents and many teachers are not aware of this difference between English and comparable languages. They are even less aware of the still greater reason for the slower speed of English literacy learning: much of the learning makes no logical sense.
Having more than one spelling per sound, such as date, day, rain, would not be so challenging if they were used consistently. But they are not. They are undermined by dozens or even hundreds of unpredictable variants, e.g. great, they, reign, which have to be individually memorised and which undermine the main patterns and make them harder to grasp (they cause what psychologists call cognitive confusion, or put more simply mess with children's brains).
For children with plenty of brainpower, and especially if they get lots of help at home as well, this is still quite manageable, even though they also take around 10 years to become proficient spellers. For children at the lower end of the ability range, and especially without educational help at home, this is an enormous educational roadblock.
– They take a very long time to become fluent readers, if ever. And as other learning depends or learning to read first, slow learners have less access to other learning. So it's not lack of phonics teaching that leaves 1 in 5 functionally illiterate. There is simply too much to learn.
I think this needs to be far more widely understood than it currently is. That's why i keep writing about it.