PHONICS SET TO RETURN TO ALL ENGLISH SCHOOLS AT LONG LAST

The way children are taught to read in primary schools in England needs to be changed, says a government review. It has backed the method synthetic phonics, which teaches children the sounds of letters and combination of letters before they move onto books. The review, by an ex-Ofsted director, says this should be the first strategy used by primary schools for all pupils.

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said she accepted the findings and saw a "real opportunity" to teach the system. She would make sure the system was taught as early as possible in schools, she told BBC Breakfast. "There is a real opportunity to teach synthetic phonics systematically, but also other skills so necessary to children learning to love reading and learning to speak and communicate effectively."

Phonics is practised in most schools but in various forms. The review, the full details of which are being published later, was carried out by a former director of school inspections at Ofsted, Jim Rose. It is expected to recommend teaching of reading must go hand in hand with developing children's speaking and listening skills. The review will call for "early systematic, direct teaching of synthetic phonics" to be the first strategy taught to all children learning to read, introduced by the age of five. It will also focus on the need for some children to have intensive "catch-up support".

Mr Rose is expected to say there is general agreement phonic work is "essential though not sufficient" in learning to read, but that there is also much debate about the best way to do it. "Despite this positive consensus about the importance of phonic work, there are deeply divided professional views about how phonic work is best taught," he will say. "The review is therefore centred on judging the best way forward from the standpoint of the learners, that is to say children who are beginner readers and writers."

The final version of the Rose review, expected early next year, will inform the government's redrafting of its literacy strategy, planned for 2007. In pure synthetic phonics, children learn to read using the sounds of letters rather than the names. So a letter "D" is said "duh" not "dee". They learn to put the sounds together to make simple words such as "c-a-t". They also learn blends of certain letter sounds, such as "ch" or "bl".

Only once they have learned all the letter sounds and the blends do they progress to reading books. The system also helps children to break down unknown words, experts say.

Many schools in England already use phonics, combined with other methods to help children to read, but proponents of synthetic phonics argue it should be followed strictly and not be mixed with other approaches.

In Scotland, schools are already being encouraged to take up synthetic phonics. The success of a pilot scheme in a school in Clackmannanshire brought widespread attention to the system of teaching. Patricia Sowter, head teacher of Cuckoo Hall School in Edmonton, north London, has been using a synthetic phonics system called Read Write Inc., developed by Ruth Miskin, for two years. "It has made a huge difference to standards of reading in particular. We now have a 100% at level four in Sats tests for reading, including children with special needs," she told the BBC News website.

A total of 31% of children at the school have special educational needs, she said. "Almost half of our children have English as a second language and it helps them because it is a systematic approach to reading, writing and spelling." Newcomers to the school who do not speak much English are put into "catch-up" programmes and small group work is used to bring children on at their own pace. The head teacher believes the success of the system is also due to it being followed across the school, by teachers and learning assistants alike

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A defeat for 'trendy Wendy' teachers

Comment from The Times

Arguments about the best way to teach children to read are among the most bitter and divisive in education, to the utter bewilderment of most parents. Jim Rose's report marks the longest of U-turns back to orthodoxy. Phonics was established practice 40 years ago, but was swept away by advocates of "progressive" child-centred theories in the Sixties and Seventies. Methods such as "real books" and "look and say" took hold, in which children were expected to work out the meaning of whole words from their "context" and their association with pictures. Critics dubbed it "look and guess".

The shift coincided with the demise of the 11-plus examination, which removed external pressure on primary schools to maintain high standards. A generation of parents soon learnt that their offspring were not discovering how to read very well. James Callaghan, the Labour Prime Minister, highlighted the "unease felt by parents and others about the new informal methods of teaching" in his 1976 speech calling for a "great debate" on education. Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives introduced the national curriculum and testing of pupils 12 years later. After a prolonged boycott by teaching unions, the first national tests of 11-year-olds in 1995 exposed massive levels of illiteracy, with more than half of pupils failing to reach the expected standard.

Traditionalists complained that teachers continued to emerge from training colleges steeped in failed "trendy Wendy" methods. Labour took office in 1997 promising to restore rigour through a national literacy hour in all schools, the first time any government had sought to tell teachers not only what to teach, but how to teach it.

Supporters of phonics, including Mr Rose, then director of inspection at Ofsted, pointed to a growing body of new research that confirmed its central role in helping children to make sense of the alphabet. But the Government's desire to introduce reform quickly and without opposition from schools led to compromise over the content of the literacy strategy. Instead of emphasising the importance of phonics, David Blunkett, the then Education Secretary, adopted a "searchlights" model that encouraged schools to select from different teaching methods, including "knowledge of context" and "word recognition".

Mr Rose is obliquely scathing of the progressive dogmas that have failed so many, saying: "It cannot be left to chance, or for children to ferret out, on their own, how the alphabetic code works."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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