Tag Archives: phonics

2010 and the Case for Change: a look back at what was promised

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In November 2010, the Conservative Government, and Michael Gove, as Secretary of State for Education, set out their vision for state education in a document entitled ‘The Case for Change’.

The concluding paragraph said:

“Reform should seek to strengthen the recruitment, selection and development of school teachers and leaders. It should strengthen and simplify the curriculum and qualifications, to set high standards, create curriculum coherence and avoid prescription about how to teach. It should increase both autonomy and accountability of schools, and ensure that resources are distributed and used fairy and effectively to incentivise improvement and improve equity.” The Case for Change, DfE, November 2010

Bold claims.

Looking at them in more detail, here are a few thoughts. Other suggestions welcome in the comments

Reform should seek to strengthen the recruitment, selection and development of school teachers and leaders: The move from a higher education led system of ITT to a school-based system failed. There are probably fewer trainees on employment-based routes now, as opposed to SCITTS or higher education routes, than during the Blair government era.

Between 2013 and 2023, the Conservative government presided over the longest period of under-recruitment to ITT, against their own targets for training. This failure to train enough teachers has had a profound effect on schools, ad has not been solved by the present government

should strengthen and simplify the curriculum and qualifications: Decoupling of A/S and A levels in 2015 substantially changed the post-16 landscape. The introduction of the English Baccalaureate weighted the curriculum in favour of traditional academic subjects. The change was never enforced on schools, although it was reported in the data about schools.  

set high standards: I am never quite sure what these are. Examination results improved to a point where exam board were required to change grade boundaries, so fewer entrants received the top grades.

avoid prescription about how to teach: Phonics was the prescribed method of teaching reading. The ITT curriculum was made even more prescriptive

increase both autonomy and accountability of schools: Local authority schools had almost complete autonomy, as their budgets were sacrosanct. Academies were fine if stand alone, but as part of a MAT, their autonomy could be seriously reduced, but their accountability may have increased, although there was no accountability for MATs as they weren’t subject to inspection.

ensure that resources are distributed and used fairy and effectively to incentivise improvement and improve equity: The National Pupil Funding Formula was introduced during a period of rising school rolls, with no consideration as to what would happen when rolls started to fall. A study of PTRs by the author shows London schools with generally better staffing ratios than schools in the north of England throughout the period of the conservative government. The Lib Dem Pupil Premium may have help provide extra resources for pupils on Free School Meals, but the staffing crisis often meant that schools with large number so FSM pupils found recruitment of staff an issue.  

Were the claims met? In many cases not, and the funding for schools in real terms declined during much the period the Conservative were in government making improvements harder to achieve. The failure to address the staffing crisis was, perhaps, the most important failure of the vision set out in 2010.

The effect of the pandemic on early learning

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The DfE today published the results of the 2022 phonics screening check and key stage 1 attainment statistics. Phonics screening check and key stage 1 assessments: England 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

These are the first phonics screening check and key stage 1 attainment statistics since 2019, after assessments were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Regardless of views on the usefulness of these tests they do provide some comparative data from before and after the pandemic.

These statistics cover the attainment of year 1 and year 2 pupils who took these assessments in summer 2022. As the DfE notes, these pupils experienced disruption to their learning during the pandemic. The headline outcome from the data is that attainment in the phonics screening check has decreased compared to 2019

According to the DfE, 75% of pupils met the expected standard in the phonics screening check in year 1, down from 82% in 2019.

87% of pupils met the expected standard in the phonics screening check by the end of year 2, down from 91% in 2019. Suggesting that schools can have an effect on outcomes.

In addition, according to the DfE, attainment at key stage 1 has decreased in all subjects in 2022 compared to 2019.

67% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, down from 75% in 2019.

68% of pupils met the expected standard in maths, down from 76% in 2019.

58% of pupils met the expected standard in writing, down from 69% in 2019.

77% of pupils met the expected standard in science, down from 82% in 2019.

I suppose these results are not a surprise given the turbulence of the past few years. Also, not much of a surprise is that some groups fared worse than others. Although the headline tables only consider single variables, such as gender, ethnicity, geographical region and SEN support, it is clear that while virtually all groups have seen declines in performance across the board, some have seen more than others.  

One striking change is performance on the phonics check for pupils eligible for Free School Meals. Those not meeting the criteria for Free School Meals as opposed to receiving free infant school meals saw the percentage meeting the expected standard fall between 2019 and 2022 from 84% to 80%, while for those eligible for Free School Meals the decrease was from 71% to 62%; down nine percentage points compared with a drop of just four per cent for those not meeting the criteria for Free School Meals.

In the Key State 1 results for the teacher assessment in mathematics, boys overtook girls, with 60% of boys compared with 67% of girls reaching the expected standard. In 2019, 75% of boys, but 77% of girls reached the expected standard.

Writing continues to lag behind reading and mathematics in the outcomes for the Key Stage 1 teacher assessments, with just 52% of boys reaching the expected standard.

These results show that there is much ground to be recovered following the effects of the covid pandemic, even if schools have an uninterrupted autumn and winter this year. Cutting funding for the education of this group may well be to produce life-long disadvantages for many of this group of children.

We all do phonics now

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An understanding of the place of phonics in early teaching seems to have become accepted practice among teachers. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/phonics-screening-check-and-key-stage-1-assessments-england-2016

The latest DfE publication of outcomes of phonic testing reveals that;

More than 4 in 5 (81%) pupils met the expected phonics standard in year 1 (6 year olds) in 2016, a 4 percentage point increase from 2015 when 77% of pupils achieved the expected standard. By the end of year 2 (age 7), more than 9 in 10 pupils (91%) met the standard in 2016, a 1 percentage point increase from 2015.

At the same time, under the new teacher assessment rules, there has been a fall in reported outcomes for the skill of writing. I suspect over the next few years there will be a real debate about the place of writing in early education. There is a role in helping to form and understand letters and also to develop the skill of communication. Will that last for the first ‘tablet’ generation? I suspect that children don’t see writing as an essential tool any more. It isn’t a skill they often see demonstrated in the home. Apart from writing your signature, when, reader, did you last pen a piece of script: possibly on your Christmas cards? This leads me to wonder about the future for written examinations? Not only will the memory test part be of less value, but if the handwriting skill isn’t seen as useful, what Twenty First century skills are we trying to test?

According to the DfE figures for England as a whole, being in small class at KS1 may help with reading, doesn’t seem to help with writing and makes no difference in mathematics skills achieved. Of course, none of this allows for parental help and the support of siblings. However, all the other features we know from past experience are repeated in the 2016 outcomes. Girls achieve higher scores overall than boys; pupils on free school meals achieve lower scores than other pupils, as do pupils with identified special needs at KS1. At this stage, those with English as a second language don’t do as well as native speakers, although we know that they can outperform as a group by later key stages.

The small sliver of good news for boys is that among pupils outperforming the expected standard in mathematics, boys outperform girls, but by a smaller margin than girls outperform boys in reading and writing. The other good news is that the gap between pupils on free school meals and other pupils continues to close, but at a slow rate of around a percentage point a year. With the living wage and assuming unemployment remains low, the number of children assessed at KS1 on free meals may well fall, making further reductions in the gap more of a challenge.

But, back to phonics. The gap between the best and worst local authorities, by end of year 2, is just eight percentage, points compared at a gap of 25% between the best and worst in writing. Sadly, Oxford, where I live, continues to perform badly, this despite five years of various interventions. The fact that these less well performing schools in Oxford will for the most part receive more funding under the new formula can only be good news, but not is the funds come from robbing cash from rural primary schools.

 

 

 

 

Mixed views on Phonics Screening Check

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The evaluation report issued today by the DfE on the Phonics Screening Check https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/198994/DFE-RR286A.pdf seems to offer some interesting messages.

The research report conducted by NfER concluded that;

One of the key messages to emerge from the evaluation so far is that many schools appear to believe that a phonics approach to teaching reading should be used alongside other methods. Evidence from the case-studies and surveys suggests that most teachers are overwhelmingly positive about phonics teaching and its contribution to reading development. However, it is less certain that this is an endorsement of the recommended approach of systematic synthetic phonics taught first and fast. Whilst nine out of ten literacy coordinators agree, at least to some extent, that the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics has value in the primary classroom, a similar proportion, somewhat contradictorily, feel that a variety of different methods should be used to teach children to decode words, suggesting there is widespread misunderstanding of the term ‘systematic synthetic phonics’. Thus, it appears more likely that the reported level of agreement with the value of systematic synthetic phonics actually represents support of the more general use of phonics within the primary classroom, and that teachers in general have not yet fully adopted the practices recommended in the Department for Education’s policy and evidence paper, The Importance of Phonics: Securing Confident Reading.

Within this broad acceptance of phonics teaching as part of a mixed approach there was less certainty reported about the Phonics Screening Check. The researchers created a typology of four different types of approach:

Supporters of synthetic phonics and the check – 28% of literacy coordinators

Supporters of synthetic phonics but not of the check – 39% of literacy coordinators

Supporters of integrated literacy teaching – 5% of literacy coordinators

Supporters of mixed methods – 28% of literacy coordinators

So, this first evaluation of the check suggests that phonics has found a place in teaching reading, and indeed probably always did have such a place in primary schools, but around a third of literacy coordinators, and presumably their schools, use phonics as a part of mixed methods or an integrated approach. A further 39% don’t see the value of the check, although they support synthetic phonics. Just over a quarter of literacy coordinators both support synthetic phonics and the check.

The next question must be around what is the evidence about outcomes in relation to the typology? Do schools teaching synthetic phonics and using the check do better than similar schools that use missed methods and ignore the check or is the check just a waste of money that forces teachers down an inappropriate route when teaching their pupils to develop the skill of reading?

Personally, I want well trained teachers working with young children, and indeed learners of any age, that can produce results using appropriate methods. I am not an expert about teaching reading, so I don’t know what the sensible approach is, and whether different children respond to different methods.

It would certainly be disappointing if using the check provided better information to parents, but that outcome resulted in more cramming, as if learning to read was some sort of examination rather than a skill that children need to develop. From the point of view of the teacher, experience in the classroom may mean a screening check can seem too simplistic and not necessary, but equally the challenge must be to find a method to help every child read that can do so, and create as much understanding from those with special educational needs. If teachers can do that then I don’t mind what method they use; if they cannot do so without structured help, such as the phonics screening check, then so be it.