NFER evaluation of the Year One phonics check May 2014
Posted: Thu May 01, 2014 2:46 pm
This is important and very interesting reading - a report by the National Foundation for Educational Research commissioned by the Department for Education in England regarding teachers' responses to the statutory Year One phonics screening check:
It indicates that many, if not most, teachers are likely to be using multi-cueing reading strategies (research has shown over and again that there are inherent dangers in the mutli-cueing approach for at least some learners) in addition to their systematic synthetic phonics teaching.
Around two-thirds of teachers indicate that they are in favour of systematic synthetic phonics teaching but a significant percentage of teachers are not in favour of the Year One phonics check - and many appear to have a somewhat limited view of phonics provision in that it is described as 15 or 20 minutes a day based on 'Letters and Sounds' (the official publication brought out in 2007 presented as a 'high-quality six phase teaching programme' but on closer analysis it is not really a 'programme' as it is incomplete and does not provide any teaching and learning resources - teachers therefore have to equip the 'Letters and Sounds' document and translate it into a programme).
This confirms that the phonics provision in schools can still be wide and varied considering the differences in the level of support and guidance in the various well-known systematic synthetic phonics programmes compared to 'Letters and Sounds' (but all with no multi-cueing reading strategies as the underpinning guidance) - and the variation in time allocated to phonics teaching within the main commercial programmes compared to schools doing more limited phonics teaching along with multi-cueing reading strategies.
The literacy results (in England) taken into consideration nationally, then, are not likely to be based on true Systematic Synthetic Phonics Teaching Principles as these principles preclude the use of multi-cueing reading strategies.
When I get time I shall select parts of this report to write comments about the findings to date.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... evaluationPhonics screening check evaluation Research report
May 2014
Matthew Walker, Shelley Bartlett, Helen Betts, Marian Sainsbury & Jack Worth - National Foundation for Educational Research
It indicates that many, if not most, teachers are likely to be using multi-cueing reading strategies (research has shown over and again that there are inherent dangers in the mutli-cueing approach for at least some learners) in addition to their systematic synthetic phonics teaching.
Around two-thirds of teachers indicate that they are in favour of systematic synthetic phonics teaching but a significant percentage of teachers are not in favour of the Year One phonics check - and many appear to have a somewhat limited view of phonics provision in that it is described as 15 or 20 minutes a day based on 'Letters and Sounds' (the official publication brought out in 2007 presented as a 'high-quality six phase teaching programme' but on closer analysis it is not really a 'programme' as it is incomplete and does not provide any teaching and learning resources - teachers therefore have to equip the 'Letters and Sounds' document and translate it into a programme).
This confirms that the phonics provision in schools can still be wide and varied considering the differences in the level of support and guidance in the various well-known systematic synthetic phonics programmes compared to 'Letters and Sounds' (but all with no multi-cueing reading strategies as the underpinning guidance) - and the variation in time allocated to phonics teaching within the main commercial programmes compared to schools doing more limited phonics teaching along with multi-cueing reading strategies.
The literacy results (in England) taken into consideration nationally, then, are not likely to be based on true Systematic Synthetic Phonics Teaching Principles as these principles preclude the use of multi-cueing reading strategies.
When I get time I shall select parts of this report to write comments about the findings to date.