Jennifer Chew's summary, on behalf of the UK Reading Reform Foundation, of the developments in official guidance for reading instruction in England in recent years is very interesting.
It has been a painful journey to reach the point where the synthetic phonics teaching principles have finally been endorsed and heavily recommended by the UK government.
The new Coalition government, however, has gone even further in its November 2010 White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, with plenty of use of the term 'synthetic phonics' and its Core Criteria for selecting a phonics programme with the added advice of using cumulative, decodable reading material so that children can experience 'early success' in reading.
We need to move full speed ahead now with teacher-training whilst common sense and evidence-based official advice prevails!
See www.syntheticphonicstraining.com for relevant paragraphs from the government's White Paper.