Reception children given e-books instead of reading books for home reading

[Randomname83738]

My daughter is in reception, and we’ve had a message today that instead of being sent home with physical reading books, children will be given a login to Collins hub to access e learning books to read at home instead. I absolutely HATE this as a concept - is this common now? We don’t have tablets, so it would be on a phone screen. I’ve looked at purchasing the books for the scheme he’s doing and it would be hundreds of pounds (presumably this is why they’re doing ebooks instead). I’m actually so disappointed in this and if I knew in advance it might have influenced my choice of school.

They were forced to!

Back around 2021 ish Ofsted forced schools to do this. My children's school at the time was amazing and had really high attainment for reading, but were rated Inadequate in Ofsted because of "not showing fidelity to a single phonics scheme ".

The stupidity was they are ks2 only, with no local infants. So kids come in at y3 having gone to a range of infant schools using a range of schemes. Any child still needing phonics readers was allowed to continue with the scheme they were used to...which was a bad thing apparently. 🙄

They were forced, yes forced, to buy into a full scheme for the handful of children that came to them each year needing a little bit longer on phonics readers.

@Randomname83738 I would just tell school that I would buy the books myself. My ds2 is in y 9 and he has never had to read a book online. Either school has it or it needs to be bought (25£ a year average goes on 5 books).

This makes me want to weep! It's heart breaking to learn that children are not given the joy of reading actual books at school. Not all families will have books readily available and libraries are in short supply - and with very limited opening hours. I loved reading with my children and both were and remain avid readers.

Replacing with a screen is just not the same. What a sad situation.

We were told we had to discontinue the use of the phonics scheme that we had in place, although it worked, it wasn’t one of the approved schemes from the government list. This meant that we had to replace all of our phonics teaching equipment, books, wall charts, prompts, everything had to show “fidelity” to the scheme. In reception, most classes start at the same level for at least the first half term. This means that we needed 45 copies of the same book, each of which cost £6.50. And this is for one week. At half term the children were assessed and children moved into different groups, however we still needed around 25 to 30 versions of each book at the same price for each week of the school year. You can imagine that the cost quickly grows. We spent upwards of £20,000 having to replace the phonics scheme. The books are sent home on a weekly basis. However, increasingly books are not returned or are returned in such a state that they are unusable. We have tried issuing fines, but the fines aren’t paid. If a child doesn’t return a book, it impacts on the next group to use the book. We are constantly having to replace books and the cost becomes prohibitive. I loathe the use of e-books. However, you can see why some schools have had to resort to using them.

@Cairneyes As a governor of a school
in a deprived area 30 years ago, what you say isn’t new! It was standard. Why did you choose that phonics scheme and spend money on it? Why do you think dc all have tablets? Why don’t you assess dc pretty much immediately? In our school some dc arrived reading! How would you teach them if you didn’t know this? Surely the dc are not all the same - they don’t need to repeat phonics if they know the sounds and can read - glad my dc didn’t go to your school.

"As a governor of a school
in a deprived area 30 years ago"

Being a governor 30 years ago doesn't gove you any insight whatsoever to the current issues.

As has been repeated numerous times on this thread. No teacher/head thinks it's a good idea. It was mandated by Ofsted. Schools had no choice. Even schools that had good reason to not (like my junior school example) were forced to or were rated RI.

I am both a parent and a reception teacher. I would never want to use e readers as either a parent or a teacher. However I would assume this is almost definitely a budget issue. Reading scheme books are very expensive they frequently get lost, ripped or simply not returned and sadly schools can not afford to replace them. If people want to complain - speak to your MP about school funding! Having said that you shouldn’t use e readers if it’s not something comfortable with. I personally don’t think a few minutes a day reading from a screen will have any negative impact - the e readers are designed simply to support the ‘decoding’ part of reading. All the other lovely (and essential parts) like inference, book handling etc you can get from real books.

No school wanted to change schemes. When phonics was originally introduced we had the government issued scheme Letters and Sounds. It was free to all schools and you bought books to go with it. Then that was ditched and we were told that we had to buy into a scheme.

As an aside Ruth Miskin, who is the person behind one of the most popular schemes was the parter of the head of OFSTED. Small world isn’t it.

Same here! There was nothing wrong with Letters and Sounds, we had excellent results using it and children learned quickly. But , as it wasn’t “approved” we had to ditch it and all the associated books and resources we had ( a local authority advisor once picked up that we had ONE old wall chart on display and we “ failed” his inspection, even though the sounds were taught in the same order, the graphics associated with the sound were different!)
And yes, a few children ( although not many in my area now) can “ read” when they start reception, doesn’t mean they know phonics though! It’s similar to children being able to “ count” because they can recite numbers!

There is no way I would be allowing this. Can you send a strongly worded opt out letter to the head and board of governors. This is really bad & trust your instinct telling you that.

also try asking at your local library if they can provide the books for your child to read.

there is literally no reason for a child to “learn” reading on a screen.

edited for typos

I’ve come across this post after feeling utterly deflated about this exact thing. My 4 year old being asked to learn to read from a screen. We are not a screen family, we have no iPads just a tv. I wanted to keep screens away for as long as possible but it’s not going to be possible any longer. I’ve just forked out £170 on a refurbed iPad JUST for him to do school reading on. I feel so upset. He is still getting real books from the library for us to read at bedtime as there’s no bloody chance I’ll be shoving a screen in his face at bedtime. We all know how bad blue light is for us, let alone kids. I could cry!

Oh no, I’m so sorry - I feel exactly the same! I’ve bought second hand reading books online and have organised them based on what sounds they include (so only starting with ones with sounds she already knows), but I also messaged the teacher and she said that they do have some physical copies of books we can sometimes us too… so we’ve managed to avoid the screen reading okay so far

@Cairneyes My DDs did phonics at nursery. I can assure you the very bright can read and do understand what they read. The very bright do exist among us. There’s no reason why dc should just have a boring phonics diet. Breadth is wonderful and dc really can develop a love of books if they get more variety. They even learn how to turn pages and talk about the characters and the story.

This is awful. Children learning to read need physical books, handling, opening them. The basics

Swiping pages on yet another screen when more research on the damage screens on the development of young children is becoming more and more clear.

@Forton26 So would a school not realise this and go all out for actual books? They can do fund raising to help out or parents march a book purchase by buying a book etc. Or 10! The assumption everyone has tablets is also very wrong.