Year 1 Phonics Screening - threshold for 2014 is released today

[Hulababy]

I know some parents were wanting to know.

www.gov.uk/government/news/phonics-screening-check-threshold-published-today

Forgot to add.

Threshold is 32/40.

Same as in 2012 and 2013.

Yippee! I had a few on the 33 /34 border and was convinced it would be 35 this year!

Thanks for that. Will be very interesting to see the distribution, and whether the 'spike' is still there at 32.

It will be interesting, yes.

Wonder why they left it the same.

I'm in NI and have never seen this. Are the children supposed to be able to sound out the fake words?

Yes, Wips. 20 real words, 20 non-words- the children should be able to read them by using phonic knowledge.

The non-words are included to check that they are using phonics and haven't just memorized lots of words by sight.

It is to assess how well they are able to use their phonics. The children are asked to decode 20 real words and 20 pseudo words, all decodable using the phonics expected by Y1 pupils.

Thanks Hulababy.

I imagine they left it the same as it's a good way to see if last years spike was manipulation or just a strange anomaly (though I read statisticians thought the latter unlikely).

My betting is that most people would bet the threshold would be higher, so if it's due to manipulation the spike will move to 33/34 (though less spiky, more of a hump). If it was just a strange anomaly, then it should form a more standard curve this time.

So have they all done this, our school haven't mentioned it at all?

Hmm I have a bad feeling that yr2 dd will miss it again

SettheWorldonFire are you in England? All Y1 pupils here had to do the check, but I have a feeling it doesn't apply in Wales and Scotland.

Peanutbutter, I have a string feeling my Y2 DS will miss it again but hopefully he will have improved on last years score of 5!

Settheworldomfire, our school didn't mention it at all. I asked his teacher about it as I wasn't sure if DS did it, he didn't it the rest of the class did.

Has your DS got additional needs orangepudding? The school can dis-apply a child from taking the phonics check, but the school should have informed the parents in advance that is what they were going to do and why.

We played down our check as we know we get stressed parents who make more of it than needs to be, hence stressing the children. The result will be given to the parents as part of the school reports next week.

I am surprised the threshold remained at 32 as the check seemed easier this year.

He has isitfriday so I expected him not to do it. His teacher said he may do it next year.

Are you really surprised - with an election before the next one?

I thought it was easier too and expected the threshold to move up to 34 as a result, though I'm glad I didn't. I'm really pleased to get 25 of mine up to the 'expected standard' even though the whole thing is b**cks, as most of them don't speak English at home.

Children having English as an additional language in no ways invalidates the phonics check.

I got my daughter's result today, just a piece of paper saying 31, failed. Felt quite devastated and has taken me a good hour of hunting on the internet to find the pass mark of 32, so she missed it by 1 point but considering she has been having speech therapy for past 18 months I am now actually relieved that it's not that bad. Did any of your schools give you the pass mark? I thought it was pretty bad to just give us the results in a sealed envelope with no guidance as to how 'bad' a fail my daughter had. Parent's evening tomorrow, would I be seen as a 'trouble maker' to complain that just giving me a result saying 31 and fail was of no real use to me?

I would mention it, especially as children don't 'pass' or 'fail'. They either 'meet the required standard' or 'don't meet the required standard'. Seems a very unprofessional way to give the results.

Sorry, to be fair it did say 'did not meet the required standard' which, of course, you can only read as failed! i just think if they'd put in the pass mark which was published yesterday I would have felt a good deal better about her being 1 mark off than wondering how far off the required standard she was.

bonsoir, if your remark was aimed at me I wasn't suggesting it did.

Are you really surprised - with an election before the next one? So true, Feenie. I was being naively uncynical. Shame, yet again, politicians putting their careers above what is in our nation's children's best interests.

It's terrible - and yet we see it time and time again.

Waiting to see the level threshold at Y6 slide down this year as well.