Phonics screen results - how bad is bad for the school as a whole?

[workatemylife]

We got a letter home today with the results of the Year 1 phonics screen. It gives a simple met / didn't meet expected level for the individual child, then underneath gives the total number of children in each category in the school.

I'm a bit . Only about half the year group met the expected level. The letter from the headmaster says that the KS1 teachers do a fantastic job of teaching children to read, and that a lot of good readers don't deal well with the phonics screen. Then, in bold, a reminder that it is the responsibility of parents to support phonics learning at home. That seems like passing the buck. Is a 50 /50 pass / fail rate normal, or would you be asking questions of the school rather than accepting that parents are in some way to blame?

Yes, I agree. It is just such an awful percentage that I thought perhaps if it were a tiny intake, say eight in the class where 1 has SEN, 1EAL then it might be forgivable.
You are right though, that phrase does give it away.

We have a 93% pass rate (out of 60) here and I know our Y1 teachers were disapointed to have a few on 31. I can't imagine how reading is being taught to have a pass rate of 50%.

I can.

One of our local schools has a recently updated reading policy on their website that very clearly states that English is not a phonetic language and many words can't be sounded out. As such they teach the children to use a variety of methods such as using the first letter and the pictures, reading the rest of the sentence and working out a word that fits and learning to read and spell a list of sight words. There's also a detailed leaflet for parents spelling out how to develop these skills a home when listening to their children read.

I think it's weird parents were told the school pass rates. maybe if it was very low there's a reason for transparency.

What sort of reason? I'd buy that if it came alongside a reason such as a very large number of children joining the school part way through year 1. Although it would have to be an unusually large number to give a pass rate of 50%.

The excuse they've given smacks of fobbing parents off in the hope that they aren't informed enough to know better. To add insult to injury they've then blamed the parents for not being supportive enough. Whilst saying it's not the teachers' fault at all because they are fantastic at teaching reading.

It is weird they released it at all. I would have thought they would hide it. Suspect they knew they would get asked and wanted to get in first with a covering letter explaining the 'reasons' why it is so low.

Our school was 82% - the children who didn't pass were either on the SEN register (statement or school action plus) or had joined the school part way through year 1. About 50% of our children never or rarely read at home.

All really interesting, thank you. It looks like the school is exceptional and not in a good way.
I suppose we should be pleased that they told us. Maybe they always release information about the balance of pass / fail, or maybe they thought it would be helpful for parents to see that theirs was not the only child whose mark was below expected levels.
The HTs letter isn't written exactly as I said above (trying to avoid outing myself too much, although if we are the only school in the country to do that badly, I may just have done that!). But I am glad that most of you don't accept the explanation, because I don't either.
It really is a perfectly ordinary looking school. Normal class size, high stability, not lots of new children arriving part way through, not lots of SEN / EAL. Something very odd is going on. I wonder what the pass rate was last year. It would be nice to know whether the school is uniformly poor at delivering phonics, or whether it is just our year group.

The 'pass rate' for the school isn't information which they are obliged to give to parents, only a child's individual performance in the PSC (Phonics Screening Check). The data on percentage 'passes' is normally only available to the school and to the LA & Dfes (and Ofsted).

If a school has consistently had a poor percentage pass rate it is likely to trigger an Ofsted inspection and if their phonics teaching is found by Ofsted to be inadequate the school is likely to get, at least, Requires Improvement. Ofsted are very hot on phonics instruction at the moment..