It is very important for people involved with teacher-training to get their information correct.
The documentary video on the page above was dated 2005.
In the accompanying blurb, the following is stated about me which is entirely incorrect:
However, the choice of contributors is of interest for those working and studying in ITE. For example, the two pro-synthetic phonics panel members are both authors of commercial phonics programmes. Ruth Miskin has written a synthetic phonics scheme and trains teachers in this method. It has had great success with pupils who are learning English as an additional language and this is made clear in the programme.
Although Debbie Hepplewhite is introduced in the programme as a primary teacher, she is also the author of a synthetic phonics online programme as well as a range of synthetic phonics decodable books, which is not acknowledged in the programme. Therefore, both speakers could be said to have a commercial interest in the use of one method of teaching decoding and potentially may benefit financially from schools adopting this approach. Debbie Hepplewhite is also very active in the political pressure group, the Reading Reform Foundation, and so has a very clear political stance on the use of phonics.
In contrast, those in the programme who do not support the sole use of synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading range from academics to classroom practitioners. These speakers have much less to gain financially from persuading the viewer of their position. Their interest seems to be in validity of the research evidence as well as what works with individual young children.
To set the record straight:
I wrote the original Phonics International programme in 2007, nearly two years after the video documentary.
In addition, being part of the Reading Reform Foundation does not mean that either I, or the foundation, had (or have) 'political interests' - far from it.
Indeed, in the video itself, you can hear Nick Gibb MP describing how it is important that the issue of early reading issue should not be a political issue - and that it should be a cross-party issue which it certainly was, and is - let us hope it remains so.
Further, Nick Gibb went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that this was the case.
The Reading Reform Foundation needed to inform and discuss the issue of research and classroom findings with politicians - but this does not make the foundation or its members 'political' in any sense of the word.
The statements provided for teacher-training lecturers and student-teachers are highly misleading and misinformed. This was taken up with the author of the text, but clearly the blurb was not amended to set the record straight.
This is not satisfactory as the page remains available on the internet for anyone to read and therefore the page continues to misinform.