Oh dear, somewhat predictably two-thirds of the Year 1 children who took the pilot Phonics Screening Check failed to reach the level decreed acceptable.
Cue Schools Minister Nick Gibb using the results to bang the drum for more, more, more systematic synthetic phonics to solve the problem.
But what if it is the test and not the children that is the problem!
There has been a sustained campaign from many early years experts against plans to introduce the Year 1 phonics test. The inclusion of made-up 'nonsense' words to check on children's ability to decode words was particularly denigrated, especially as this was found confusing by some of the most able readers.
And the evaluation of the screening check by Sheffield Hallam University was hardly a ringing endorsement. Only a third of schools felt the check accurately assessed the decoding abilities of children with speech difficulties, for example, while nearly a third believed it was actually a negative experience for these children.
Around a quarter of the schools involved in the pilot use systematic phonics teaching, but there has been no breakdown of how children from these schools performed compared to others with more mixed methods.
We should all be concerned about the impact this insistence on one specific approach will have on the early years curriculum and inspections.
Meanwhile, I had to smile at the Radio 4 newsreader who proved the difficulties of relying on decoding in English when she pronounced the word as 'phoh-nics' in her report last week!
