England: DfE Year One phonics screening check + results

[debbie]

An experienced literacy coordinator sent this message to me about the Year One phonics screening check and I think it is a view worth sharing as I too have concerns about this possible scenario:

I am concerned myself about some of what I hear. I think a lot of schools have improved results in the test by doing lots of test practice, and this can be a short cut in place of building a long term, embedded phonics strategy that really supports whole Literacy development.

So people still do a rubbishy Letters and Sounds programme with loads of time wasting and extraneous stuff, with a massive load of nonsense word practice in the last three months so the kids pass - it isn't embedded in their whole school way of looking at reading and writing (always the poor relation).

In a worst case scenario this could result in people saying "Look, phonics results are rising but it isn't impacting on writing so it isn't as important as everyone said it was - lets go back to our old ways..."

In our school our amazing results in the phonics follow a pattern of rising results in English generally. We do well because we have an embedded Literacy strategy - the test is a formality for us which we barely need to practice. It is not so in most schools sadly.

This primary school uses the Phonics International resources from Reception to contribute to their 'embedded Literacy strategy'.

[debbie]

Thanks to Susan Godsland (of www.dyslexics.org.uk - fab site) for flagging up the availability of both the 2013 and 2014 Year One Phonics Screening Check:


https://www.gov.uk/government/collectio ... ning-check

I continue to urge all schools teaching beginners to read in English to make good use of this check even where it is not statutory.

Then please do feel free to share your results with me/others!

[debbie]

Hot off the press (25th September 2014), the UK Government Year One Phonics Screening Check results and and of Key Stage One Assessments - really interesting statistics:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... gland-2014

2011 - 32% of children reached or exceeded benchmark of 32 out of 40 words read correctly in the pilot for the Y1 phonics check.

2012 - 58% of children reached or exceeded the benchmark of 32 out of 40 words read correctly in the first year of the roll-out of the check as a statutory assessment

2013 - 69% of children reached or exceeded the benchmark of 32 out of 40 words read correctly - but concern about 'spikes' in results for the score of 32 marks in 2012 and 2013

2014 - 74% of children reached or exceeded the benchmark of 32 out of 40 words read correctly and this year teachers were not told the benchmark prior to the official dates of the assessments


It is really good to see these year-on-year improvements in teaching effectiveness and children's decoding results.

As a rough guideline, you will find that leading phonics proponents such as myself are looking for results of 85% to 100% of the children reaching or exceeding the benchmark in the Year One Phonics Screening Check.

It is good to see an increase in the number of children reading 40 out of 40 of the words correctly (or 'plausibly' in the case of the 20 pseudo-words that are always included in the check).

[debbie]

Press release re rise in results:

100,000 more pupils on track to succeed in reading via phonics

From:Department for Education and Nick Gibb MP

History:Published 25 September 2014

Phonics check results show more pupils are now doing well.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/1000 ... ia-phonics

Three years on from the introduction of the phonics reading check, 100,000 more children are now on track to become excellent readers, figures released today (25 September 2014) reveal.

The check, given to all pupils in year 1, ensures pupils are making the right progress in learning to read and allows teachers to identify those in danger of falling behind.

The figures show that for 2014:

the proportion of 6-year-olds achieving the expected standard has risen by 16 percentage points since 2012 to 74% (474,000 pupils), equivalent to 102,000 more children doing well, based on the 2014 cohort
the proportion of 6-year-olds achieving the expected standard rose by more than 5 percentage points, equivalent to nearly 24,000 pupils, in just 1 year
the gap between pupils eligible for free school meals and their peers achieving the expected level has closed by 1 percentage point since 2012

Word of warning from me, however:

Teachers can improve phonics results and yet still teach, or allow children to apply be default, multi-cueing reading strategies based on guessing words from picture cues, initial letter cues and context cues.

In the long term, this will do at least some children a great disservice.

[debbie]

Richard Adam's piece in the Guardian (25th September) - note the immediate negative comments from the majority in the 'readers comments' section:


http://www.theguardian.com/education/20 ... ics-method

Rise in children passing literacy benchmarks as phonics method pays off

Government’s phonics check sees 5% rise in number of five- and six-year-olds passing, with 74% of pupils in England reaching expected standard

The embrace of phonics to teach the youngest primary school pupils to read appears to be paying dividends after new figures showed a rise in the number of pupils passing the government’s benchmarks for literacy in the first and second years of formal schooling.

The results of the government’s controversial phonics check – designed to test how children read and pronounce simple words and sounds – saw a 5% increase in the number of five- and six-year-olds passing the check, with 74% of state school pupils in England reaching the expected standard in 2014.

In contrast, just 58% of pupils were able to correctly pronounce the expected number of words and sounds when the phonics check was first administered in state primary schools nationwide in 2012.

Here is one readers's (rare) positive and sensible comment:

It is unbelievable that in over an hour of posting not one person has responded positively to this news.

There has been a substantial improvement in the reading level of very young children, through what appears to be a well researched change in approach. As the father of a child that will be taking the test this year I'm delighted my child is being educated under the phonics system rather than it's predecessor.

Reading is the key to success in life. Anything that helps children improve their reading skills in any way should be celebrated and we should be shouting about his from the rooftops.

The challenge must be to get 100% to pass. Why any child can leave primary school unable to read is completely beyond me.

Thank goodness for one such comment then!

[debbie]

Guardian:

Did primary school teachers in England game the phonics check?

Marks scored by primary school pupils showed a remarkably similar and unusual profile – until the Department for Education changed the rules. Were teachers cheating or was something else going on?

http://www.theguardian.com/education/da ... nics-check

[debbie]

I have just highlighted these results from the ARK schools via Twitter because these results are what all leading systematic synthetic phonics proponents would expect with the most effective teaching. These results reflect results now being shown through the Year One Phonics Screening Check with use of the main SSP and linguistic phonics (e.g. Sounds-Write) programmes (the programmes included in the government's match-funded initiative from 2011 to 2013). A full SSP programme provides systematic rich-content and rigorous, simple, routine teaching and practice - not 'extraneous' practice which does not focus well enough on the content or skills rehearsal:


http://arkschools.org/news/ark-primarie ... cs-results

We need to aim for 100% of the children reaching or exceeding the benchmark in the Year One Phonics Screening Check.

[debbie]

See here for the official results of the number of schools (out of 16,000+) in 2013 and 2014 where 95% of the children reached or exceeded the 32 out of 40 words read correctly or plausibly in the Year One phonics screening check:

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/for ... .php?t=743

[debbie]

Alison Clarke of 'Spelfabet' writes yet another sensible piece - this time on 'nonsense words':


http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2015/01/let ... more-12794

Let’s call “nonsense word decoding” “new word attack”

A key criticism leveled at the very sensible use of nonsense words to assess children’s awareness of sounds and spelling pattern knowledge is that they don’t mean anything.

But how true is that?

In the UK all Year 1 children’s reading word attack is now tested via a Phonics Screening Check, so I thought I’d ask Google for definitions of some of its example nonsense words:

[debbie]

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... 4_text.pdf

DfE

Phonics screening check and national curriculum assessments at key stage 1 in England, 2014

[debbie]

Andrew Old has written a really great post about the statistical findings of the Year One Phonics Screening Check and the Year Two national literacy assessments:


http://phonicsinternational.com/forum/v ... =2196#2196

He summarises why the arguments of the 'phonics denialists' against the nature and the use of the Year One Phonics Screening Check are not valid.

[debbie]

A good posting by Heather F via her blog which was generated by a Twitter discussion re homework consisting of 'nonsense words':

King Solomon's Judgement


https://heatherfblog.wordpress.com/2015 ... judgement/

A recent twitter discussion made me reappraise my childhood dismissal of Solomon’s judgement. If you are not regularly on ‘teacher twitter’ you may not be aware that no holiday is complete without a phonics spat. The phonics screening check was the topic of discussion. This check in year one is strongly supported by advocates of Systematic Synthetic Phonics and condemned by opponents as pointless and harmful. I think the reason discussions become so heated is because everyone involved really cares about getting the teaching of reading right. What is most interesting is that both sides claim to really value giving children a knowledge of phonics and decoding (sounding out) as a means to decode words, whether as the exclusive strategy or one of a number of possible approaches. So phonics decoding is my metaphorical baby, both sides claiming to love it but how will they respond to Solomon’s test of their commitment?

[debbie]

Fiona Barry talks about the Year One Phonics Screening Check in 'The Guardian':



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... ccess.html

Phonics screening check: spelling out success

Parents do not need to "drill their child" to pass the phonics screening check, says Fiona Barry, they can try out fun learning activities at home

And in response to the article above, John Walker of Sounds-Write said this via Twitter:

What rubbish Barry spouts! And why does the Telegraph publish such nonsense? (

The trouble, one might suggest, is that news media editors wouldn't know good information from bad!

[debbie]

I flag up information about England's 2015 Year One Phonics Screening Check results here via the forum for the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction (IFERI):


http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=3&t=471