This response to the Rose Interim Report is based on the fact that I am a trained early years teacher, former headteacher, former university senior lecturer in early childhood education and a professor of early childhood education and research. I start at this point in the hope that you will appreciate that my comments are made from a position of extensive knowledge and experience.
It is a continuing frustration to me that despite all research evidence to the contrary, reports such as Rose still place a heavy emphasis on 'formal'
teaching methods for young children. This is open to wide misunderstanding and misinterpretation by early years staff, not least because many are untrained in teaching language and reading skills, child development, or teaching and learning through play.
Therefore I have grave concerns about the Rose report's repeated emphasis on 'phonic work' (my emphasis). Such a statement can only alienate and demoralise early years professionals who know, from their training and experience, that phonics learning is more about playing with the components of our complex language, and teaching in a way that engages children in the excitement of speaking, listening, mark-making and enjoying the richness of the English language. This applies equally to first and additional language users.
In general, the report is written from a curriculum 'delivery' perspective, not from the perspective of young learners. Account needs to be taken of the developmental capacities of the young child. For example, many child struggle to hear the difference between b, d and t or see the difference between b, d and p.
It is insufficient to examine only the teaching perspective: the learner has to be the main focus of any teaching, particularly in the early years, where developing confidence and a disposition to learning are key factors.
One size fits all
The report adopts a 'one-size-fits-all' policy - one method of teaching phonics for all children, irrespective of learning style and cultural background. This is antithetical to recent positive moves to develop more child-oriented practice and runs counter to the 'age-appropriate' approach and developmentally appropriate activities promised in the recent DfES paper, Early Years Foundation Stage: Direction of Travel.
The Rose report ignores the influential EPPE project, yet the EPPE researchers provide a powerful argument that effective learning is heavily dependent on 'sustained shared thinking', when a practitioner works with a child to extend his/her thinking and knowledge. Similarly, scant attention has been paid to factors such as child development, early cognition, international experiences, the affective power of story and literature and the socio-cultural dimensions of literacy.
The report assumes that all young children will be undertaking written work by the age of five. This is inappropriate and places unachievable expectations on some children, who are at risk of being marked as 'failures' from an early age.
What many children can do is make marks and draw, the starting point for writing. Through these activities, they will gain confidence and co-ordination and manipulation skills gradually to produce more 'formal'
writing.
Early education works on a long-established principle that what the child can do is the starting point for all teaching and learning. Therefore, all phonics teaching should start from children's current abilities before undertaking paper-based reading and writing activities.
Parents ignored
There seem to be fundamental contradictions in the report. The summary emphasises 'prime communication skills' and then states 'Phonic work...
should be taught systematically' and adds that 'synthetic phonics offers...
young beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers', suggesting that such phonics in itself will be sufficient, rather than suggesting a combination of play-based activities to promote a wide range of literacy skills.
The report also ignores the role of parents, whose involvement benefits enormously their children's developing literacy and enjoyment of books. It will be difficult and costly enough to train practitioners, let alone parents, who largely lack the skills to teach phonics effectively. And being taught differently by different adults could prove disastrous for children getting to grips with the nuances of letter-sound relationships.
Neither does the report address the issue of regional or cultural differences in accents and sounds.
Overall, the report seems in denial of the complexities of using English as a phonetic language. As Dombey points out, 'Many English spellings simply do not fit with the idea of one-to-one correspondence between letter and phoneme. It's not really possible to "sound out" such common words as "one", "was" and "all".'
Workforce training
Of gravest concern to me is that the report ignores the fact that many early years practitioners are not qualified teachers. Also, enforcing a specific inappropriate method of teaching upon effective qualified teachers will only rob them (again) of their professionalism and morale.
The report should have acknowledged that early years practitioners have very different starting points. Some are trained in literacy teaching but many have only practical, experiential knowledge - useful but insufficient.
How will they judge what is most effective for individual children or assess levels of achievement?
Also, what would be the cost of training the entire workforce in synthetics phonics? What milestones or markers would have to be met? Who is available to train the practitioners? Can the workforce cope with yet another initiative?
I fail to see any real evidence in the Rose Interim (or in the Select Committee's) Report that 'the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming'.
The Select Committee heard evidence, in the main, only from those who support a synthetic phonics approach. In a recent article, Dr Morag Stuart (who did give evidence to the Select Committee) comments that 'after more than 30 years of research effort, no adequate test has yet been made of the hypothesis that phoneme awareness actually does influence the development of reading' (2005: 48).
That our writing system is alphabetic is not in doubt; that the alphabet, when translated into sounds, is downright idiosyncratic is not in doubt either. If young children were to rely heavily on the alphabetic sounds it is highly unlikely they would make much sense of many of the words they need to read and write.
Even spelling simple words 'synthetically' is fraught with problems. It is impossible to articulate consonants without adding 'uh' or 'er', for example, b = buh, c = ker. Buh, a, ter does not sound out to 'bat'.
It takes specific teaching and articulation strategies to show children how to sound out individual letters to blend or sythesise them or break them down. Consider how difficult basic words such as 'could' and 'because'
become with a synthetic phonics approach.
Analytic phonics, at least, allows far greater opportunity for understanding. For example, 'at' (as a word and as a rhyme) can be added to 'h', 'b', 'c', and also contribute to rhyming sounds, among other things.
It also offers an efficient way for children to develop a large sight vocabulary for reading and spelling alongside mixed sensory and kinaesthetic approaches.
Individuals and groups
Learning to read and write is a complex process, made all the more difficult by children approaching the task very differently depending on their own learning style, disposition to learning and literacy experiences.
There is no set formula for learning to read and write.Suggesting that there is does practitioners a disservice. Learning is an 'untidy' business and happens in the most unexpected ways and at varied times.
It has been a revelation to me to read the Interim Review and Direction of Travel document together. They might well be written about totally different age groups. While DOT emphasises individual programmes for young children, the Review writes about 'teaching the whole group or class together, right from the start' (p12) and 'grouping children for the teaching of phonics'. Why recommend a practice antithetical to the known ways in which young children learn best? Children under five or six years do not thrive on formal whole-class teaching, as identified in the POST report (2000): the approach used must embed learning in meaningful contexts.
I must state that I am not against phonics teaching per se: there is a place for alphabetic and phonological awareness to be taught and learned.
My argument is with how this is likely to take place in the climate and manner outlined in the report.
What the report suggests will not work with young children because it is detached from their lives and realities. Synthetic phonics may enable some children to decode, but will they understand and enjoy what they read? Surely the latter should be a major aim of any literacy programme. The emotional aspects of storytelling and story sharing are easily forgotten when the focus is on 'accelerating' children's acquisition of reading subskills and, as we all know, the disposition to read can easily be compromised by this urge to hurry children along. Let us not be party to doing this to young children: they deserve better.
References
* Early Years Foundation Stage: Direction of Travel (2005) DfES
* Dombey, H (2006) How should we teach children to read? Books for Keeps.
156, 6-7.
* Goswami, U (2005) Synthetic Phonics and Learning to Read: A Cross-language Perspective. Educational Psychology in Practice. 21(4), 27-282.
* POST Report 140 www.parliament.uk/post/home.htm 2000
* Sylva, K, Melhuish, E, Sammons, P, Siraj-Blatchford, I and Taggart, B (2004) The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project.
Technical Paper 12. The Final Report. Effective Pre-School Education.
London: DfES/Institute of Education, University of London
