Y1 phonics screening

[Itscurtainsforyou]

Just found the results of my 6 year old's phonics screening in his bag.

Looks like he's done ok (37/40 is ok, right?) but I'm not sure what this screening is for. Is it related to sats or to stream them next year, or something else?

I will ask the teacher but unlikely to get hold of her until towards the end of the week.

Rafals, I don't think the national pass rate is something to aim for at all. But likewise, I don't think ignoring the actual abilities of the children to pluck a percentage out of the air is the way forward either. Myself and my colleague haven't failed the children 15% of children in our class who didn't pass. They were never going to pass. Failing them would have meant not giving them the extra help and support they required over the year in phonics. They all made great progress but didn't pass. No surprises. Two of them are unlikely to pass by the end of Y2 but my Head will ensure they do regardless of that.

15% stugfleing indicates quite a high level of disadvantage in the class, but that's still well within normal fluctuation.

On a whole population basis, about 95% of pupils who learn to read with the phonic code explicitly taught (and no other methods used) will do well, leaving 5% struggling and in need of futher support or intervention.

Other methods or any mix of methods and the number struggling is about 20%.

Those figures are however of limited usefulness when you're only looking at one class or year group. It becomes more relevant the larger the dataset you aggregate.

Applying % to small numbers of children is the cause of an awful lot of grief in the education system, I would say.

Which is why I said just setting a bar of 95% wasn't helpful. There will always be the blip that's outside of the school's control especially in small classes.

But sleepingdogs posts seemed to be justifying a result of 80-85% based on national data and a few children with SEN and summer birthdays should make a difference. The test shouldn't be picking out children with summer birthdays just because they have summer birthdays.

I think all schools should set the bar at 100% but be aware that factors outside their control may influence the end result.

Revising at home seems daft. Risks artificially inflating your child's score above the threshold so they then wouldn't get the additional help they actually need What an odd thing for a teacher to do.

Practising phonics more generally so the child is more secure is different from coaching for the rest.

Given the waiting lists for speech therapy I think 100% is cloud cuckoo land. Plenty of y1 children can't articulate all the phonemes!

Unless the child is mute speech difficulties aren't a barrier to passing the PSC.

" • Any pronunciation difficulties should be taken into account when deciding whether a response is acceptable. For example, a pupil unable to form the ‘th’ sound who instead usually says ‘fw’ should have this scored as correct. "
From the administrators guide

That's good to know but not my anecdotal experience (friend's child). Perhaps child was less good at phonics than her mother believed

It's the reason the check is meant to be administered by someone who knows the child well. It allows them to make adjustments for speech difficulties. I've got a child in my class who pronounces cat at tat and come as tum but oddly he can say /k/ in isolation so this would be taken into account during the check (along with all his other speech problems)

My dd came home with her results today and got 33/40 which is a pass but she scored much better in all of her practice tests!
Her school has been downgraded by Ofsted to RI and has a massive Sen population, around 70%.
The school really pushed the phonics screening with paper after paper to practice.
Will the parents find out the pass rate? It would be interesting to know.

The expected score is 32. Personally I'd still offer additional support to children scoring 33-34-35

Given the numbers of 'phonics doubters' including some teachers, I think that the phonics screening is there to ensure that schools do actually teach phonics properly. If you dropped the test then plenty of schools would head back to mixed methods, despite the evidence base supporting phonics.

Yes I thought about that mrz, on paper she only just scraped by but generally did much better with the (tons) of practice papers we did and school did.
Can't say they made a tremendous difference and I expect a fair few dc in her class to have scored way under 32.

The covering letter we got with the results said that dc scoring below the pass rate ( did not mention it is 32 but I knew that already ) will be given additional support in y2 and the level of support given will be dependent on how far away they scored from the pass rate so in our situation I don't think my dd will be given any extra support but as always I would welcome it.

In that case, it might be useful to ask the teacher which sounds your dd didn't read correctly, and use the summer to ensure that she's really secure.

Thank you I will do that :)