The singular, structured approach to the teaching of reading and the speed at which it is being introduced alarms early years experts. Simon Vevers reports
New guidance from the Government is creating alarm among early years specialists and practitioners as it maps out a time-limited, headlong rush into the implementation of synthetic phonics as an exclusive method of improving child literacy.
They fear that Letters and Sounds, which replaces the previous guidance Playing with Sounds, is over-prescriptive, is likely to put young children off reading and is undermining a key emphasis in the Early Years Foundation Stage on the need to treat each child individually and develop personalised learning.
Most practitioners are not opposed to an element of phonics in literacy teaching, but many insist that it is inappropriate to impose it on children under five. As early years specialist Wendy Scott points out, 'Other countries wait until children are older, when they can hear and pronounce words accurately and have a good grasp of vocabulary and meaning. By six or seven, most children can crack the phonetic code quickly and easily.'
Schools minister Lord Adonis appears to be the driving force behind the push for synthetic phonics, which the Government sought to adopt after a limited study of 300 children at schools in Clackmannanshire in Scotland and following the recent Rose Report into literacy.
Dominic Wyse, senior lecturer in Early Years and Primary Education at Cambridge University, says that he and other academics have received personal letters from Lord Adonis asking for an audit of phonics teaching they have carried out with teacher trainees. 'We are supposed to send them back to him and he says he will then send round Ofsted at some point to check up on us. It is absolutely staggering.'
Time-limited phases
Letters and Sounds has six phases. The first concentrates on speaking and listening, while the others are designed as 'a robust programme of high-quality phonics work to be taught systematically'. While practitioners have been using phonics as well as other methods of teaching reading, they are now told, 'It is recommended that this is done for a discrete period - around 20 minutes - on a daily basis, as the prime approach to teaching children how to read and spell words.'
To reinforce the primacy of phonics as a method, the guidance adds that it has to be 'learned largely through direct instruction, rather than as one of several methods of choice'.
The DfES has set time limits for each phase, for example practitioners are expected to move children on to Phase 2 before completing Phase 1. Phase 2 is expected to take six weeks, Phase 3 should last 12 weeks and Phase 4 between four and six weeks.
Dr Wyse has looked at 42 phonics instruction studies internationally and found this type of 'isolated, discrete synthetic phonics of the kind being pushed by the Government' is not supported by research. Nor does it follow the recommendations of the Rose Report, which 'introduced a separation between teaching the sounds and the other aspects of reading, particularly comprehension'. Research evidence 'supports keeping comprehension and decoding closely aligned', he adds.
Terry Wrigley, a senior lecturer in education at Edinburgh University, highlights in his book, Another School is Possible, what he regards as the principal shortcomings of the Clackmannanshire research. It involved single words tests 'where you have to decipher and pronounce separate words but not make sense of them', he says, and 'if you present words in isolation, children have nothing else to go on but phonics, so it is not surprising if those who have been taught this way do best in this kind of test.'
The views of these two academics are also embraced by practitioners and early years consultants such as Margaret Edgington. She is alarmed at the directive in the new guidance that children do not need to complete Phase 1 before embarking on synthetic phonics in Phase 2. She says that children aged four do not legally have to be in school or any other setting and should not be subject to Government targets for mastering letter sounds.
Julie Morrow, head of the Stoneygate children's centre in Preston, Lancashire, has studied child speech and language development and has the benefit of seeing at first hand at what pace they develop their literacy skills. She says some of the children she works with have 'very limited language skills' and do not all develop the physical capacity to say sounds at the same age.
'I have ensured that staff have had recent training related to the development of phonics appropriate to the age group of the children we work with. With any area of the curriculum, if you can take out aspects of it and teach children creatively and adapt them to child learning styles, then that's appropriate. You can raise children's phonological awareness in creative ways that are far more effective and far more likely to have a lasting impact on those children without following a narrow and prescriptive set of guidelines.'
Helen Mitchell, Foundation Stage manager at the Claremont Primary School in Blackpool, warns that there is going to be 'a lot of pressure on Foundation Stage practitioners in the next year'. She believes the Government should have combined any training on phonics with work around the EYFS, 'rather than rush one element through quicker than the rest'.
Her school has been using its own phonics programme for several years, in common, she says, with other practitioners who have 'their own version of what works for them and their children'. She thinks it should be up to teachers to decide whether children will benefit from additional phonics work.
Wendy Scott says that Foundation Stage Profile results have 'consistently shown that linking sounds to letters, along with writing, are the goals achieved by the lower proportion of children'. It also runs counter to the 'principles' of the EYFS, particularly the first one which centres on 'A Unique Child' and the insistence that all areas of learning are equally important at this stage in a child's development. In its Direction of Travel document issued two years ago, prior to the consultation on the EYFS, the DfES stated unambiguously that teaching should pay attention to children's individual needs.
Margaret Edgington says the new orientation towards synthetic phonics, with a proposed duration for each phase, is at odds with the spirit of the Rose Report, which states, 'When to introduce phonic work systematically should be a matter of principled, professional judgement based on careful observation and robust assessment.'
She says, 'Teachers are not being told they can use their principled, professional judgement. They are not being told that for most children synthetic phonics should start around the age of five. They are being told to start them as early as possible, and the worst thing is that this is being done with whole classes.'
Professional judgement
Lesley Staggs, former national director of the Foundation Stage and now an independent consultant, says she is relieved that there is 'a heavy emphasis on speaking and listening in Phase 1', but she is deeply concerned at the decision to publish separate guidance and training programmes 'detached from the EYFS'.
She points out that there has been far less consultation over synthetic phonics than there has been over the EYFS and yet it is being promoted much more vigorously. Each primary school is receiving five copies of Letters and Sounds, while they have to get the statutory EYFS through their local authority and there are dedicated briefings for headteachers, which has not happened with the EYFS.
She fears language development could become 'a subset of Letters and Sounds' and that including young children, who do not have the underpinning language and concentration skills, in structured teaching as apart of a whole class could also have an adverse effect on their emotional development.
So the message from specialists and practitioners is clear: in its rash, target-driven pursuit of swift improvements in literacy levels, using a method which separates mastery of sounds from comprehension, the Government may actually be undermining children's ability to learn and sowing the seeds of underachievement in future years.
