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The 2015 Reading Reform Foundation conference was one very special event - the energy in the theatre was tangible!
The video footage and slides of most of the talks will be made available - news of this to follow.
Meanwhile, we were privileged that once again Nick Gibb, Minister for School Reform came to speak at the conference. Nick Gibb gave a fantastic talk - but he stayed to engage in a healthy debate about changes in the teaching profession which may take ten years or so to come to full fruition - more about this later!
Thank you so much to all the people who took the time and trouble to attend the RRF event - it was very good to speak with old friends and new friends.
Here is the essence of Nick Gibb's final ministerial talk of this parliament:
The success of phonics versus ‘look and say’ has been contested since and that is why it’s so important that we are here today. I am grateful to the Reading Reform Foundation for convening this discussion and for your work advancing phonics in the UK since the late 1980s. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all of the experts in this field who continue to contribute to the debate in support of phonics and who have taught me so much over the last 10 years - Ruth Miskin, Jennifer Chew, Sue Lloyd, Debbie Hepplewhite and Marlynne Grant to name but a few.
Last edited by debbie on Sun Mar 29, 2015 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
We've had some great comments via Twitter and the RRF message forum - such as:
@Dyslexiaderby
Absolutely amazing day at RRF conference with @debbiehepp and numerous inspirational speakers. It was recorded, watch this space for link.
I enjoyed the conference immensely, from Debbie's rousing beginning talk, to Nick Gibb's at the end, unusual to hear a politician who seemed to know what he was talking about. He even knows the right kind of questions to ask 6 year olds! I particularly liked that i was able to listen to all the speakers, and not feel I was missing out on anything, which is often the case with a conference programme that is overcrowded, speakers not given enough time, or doubled-up sessions with choices to be made. The chair of the conference was excellent, economical and precise with the introductions.
I can't think of anyway it could have been bettered really. Even the sandwiches were great.
Many thanks to the RRF.
A great conference once again - many thanks to all the organisers!
Like Pam I appreciated not having to choose between different topics, which always leaves me torn. I'm so glad the RRF did not sit on its laurels after the Rose Report: the speakers revealed how much variation in provision exists around the country - roll on the tipping point mentioned by one speaker - ?Nick Gibb. Re Scotland- it's like Clackmannanshire never happened!
Good to see friendly "old" faces and meet new ones that I look forward to meeting again.
Speaking at the Reading Reform Foundation conference at the weekend, Mr Gibb, said the effective teaching of reading in schools was "absolutely crucial".
He attacked critics of the phonics check, saying that there was a "substantial body of evidence" to indicate that systematic synthetic phonics is the most effective way to teach children to read.
"In Government, we’ve made sure that our far-reaching reforms in education are grounded firmly in evidence, that’s why we have changed the curriculum to be even more explicit to what the law is in relation to phonics," he said.
The following year I was given over 30 boys to teach. By then I had also come across an organisation called the Reading Reform Foundation. The RRF showed me the research evidence behind Synthetic Phonics and how what I had discovered by chance was a tool we could all be using to teach reading. By the end of that year the boys had made a jump of nearly three years in their reading ages. This phonics stuff was working and the headteacher decided it had to go into our infant classes and from there the school has moved steadily forward.
The reason I wrote this blog is that last weekend I came over to England to attend the RRF conference in London. I heard fantastic speakers, including Sam Bailey and Josie Mingay, who have seen the ability of good phonics teaching to help children learn to read and have a chance to succeed in school. Also present was Nick Gibb MP, Tory Minister for School Reform. He clearly knew his stuff and showed his clear passionate belief in phonics as a basis for teaching children to read. This conference was his last official act as a minister and he could clearly have been elsewhere, but he wasn’t. One person that wasn’t there was any spokesperson from the Labour Party.
