Dr Grant identifies a number of vulnerable groups in England and then goes on to illustrate that the needs of these groups educationally are all addressed with good Systematic Synthetic Phonics teaching without the
multi-cueing reading strategies:
This most recent study (2010-2013) is set in the context of government initiatives to improve reading standards in England through “high quality phonic work” (4, 5, 6, 7). In the UK there are many disadvantaged children who still struggle to learn to read in school and there are specific concerns about a variety of vulnerable children. In this study the following groupings were identified from official Department for Education (DfE) classifications:
• boys,
• children from low-income families who qualify for free school meals,
• Pupil Premium children - pupils who have been registered as eligible for free school meals at any point in the last 6 years or have been looked after in public care for 6 months or longer,
• children whose ethnicity is non-white British,
• children whose first language is not English,
• children with special educational needs,
• children with summer birthdays.
In this study the school also identified two vulnerable groups:
• children who are struggling learners for whom the school provided extra teaching in order for the children to keep up – in so-called ‘catch-up’ groups,
• children with significant social, emotional and behavioural difficulties who were identified in Year 2 as a ‘challenging behaviour’ group, requiring additional managing.
I would like to draw attention to these vulnerable groups as it is very likely that behaviour in Year 2 will deteriorate because of teachers' prejudices and tendencies to continue at least to some extent with
multi-cueing reading strategies.
Moving into Year 2 is a danger point as this is when the emphasis for teachers is on the forthcoming national teacher assessments based on
higher-order literacy achievement (for reading and writing - the end of Key Stage One national assessments).
Many teachers stop or greatly reduce their daily systematic phonics teaching which creates grave danger of setting weaker learners back in their progress-to-date.
In other words, when a more 'whole language' approach becomes more likely, the behaviour issues, or learning difficulties, of many children is likely to be exacerbated (made worse).
It is not advisable to allow a scenario where multi-cueing becomes, or remains, a dominant approach to reading - especially for these weaker groups.
This suggests that we now have to be very vigilant and analytical about the progress (or lack of) of the weaker groups - particularly now when virtually all teachers say they are doing 'systematic synthetic phonics' but, in reality, they are not doing it according to the leading-edge research and classroom findings as they look like they are still mixing it with multi-cueing reading strategies.
In other words, we are fighting the corner for the most vulnerable children moving forwards.
Those teachers, and others, who have the mindset that 'some children need something different' or 'learning to read needs multiple reading strategies' (which amounts in reality to a lot of guessing) is very, very worrying.
Also, we can identify the worrying mindset: 'the children have been phonicked to death and that didn't work, now they need something different' - and we know that many of these children then go on to receive intervention programmes underpinned by multi-cueing guessing strategies (such as Reading Recovery and cheaper clones of the RR approach) which may seriously undermine synthetic phonics teaching and lead away from automatic blending application as the reading reflex for lifting the words off the page.
Consider this, when the picture clues disappear from texts, and the vocabulary in the texts becomes more challenging and previously unknown to the reader so there is no prior knowledge to call upon, how is the reader to lift the word off the page?
There IS only a phonics route!
Phonics provides lifelong knowledge and skills for reading and spelling, and should be understood universally as underpinning lifelong, adult literacy.
In Year 2 and beyond, high quality phonics teaching must not fizzle out particularly for these vulnerable groups.
The entire teaching profession and those involved with teacher-training, and politicians, and indeed the general public, should be aware of the issues raised by the NFER report and Dr Grant's report.
This is fundamentally important stuff because reading and writing underpins education and life chances.