Media Information: Read All About It

nick cowen, 5 September 2007

Weak reading lies at the heart of the educational apartheid between the advantaged and disadvantaged, and England’s low social mobility. The inability to read properly is the single greatest handicap to progress both in school and adult life.

As of this week, all children in primary schools will be taught to read using ‘first and fast’ synthetic phonics. This means that children’s first experience in school of learning to read will be to learn 44 letter sounds which they will be taught to blend together – or ‘synthesise’ – to form words.

Background: despite additional billions invested in education, a significant achievement gap between rich and poor persists. [p2] At the heart of this lie poor reading skills:

• Original ‘flagship’ National Literacy Strategy has failed to drive up reading standards

• Government policy was based on flawed methods touted for decades by ‘trendy’ academics

This government’s move to systematic synthetic phonics in the classroom brings new hope that children of all backgrounds will be taught to read properly, according to a report by the independent think-tank Civitas.

Poor achievement, related poor behaviour in secondary schools and the vast increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) connect directly to poor literacy teaching at primary school level. [p2]

Systematic synthetic phonics is likely to be a highly effective way of tackling both our educational and social problems today. Evidence from longitudinal academic research as well as from Civitas’ own Supplementary Schools project has shown that teaching children to read via systematic synthetic phonics can bridge the gap between readers from disadvantaged and advantaged homes like no other method.

The famous Clackmannanshire example showed that pupils taught to read using systematic synthetic phonics were, on average, three and a half years more advanced than their counterparts taught with alternative methods by the end of primary school – across socio-economic backgrounds. Civitas’ Supplementary Schools experience has also demonstrated that the reading of struggling older primary school pupils can also benefit enormously from concentrated programmes of synthetic phonics. After a two-week long booster class this summer, the average reading age of the children attending the summer school rose by one year and nine months. [p12]

‘Our contention is that the efforts to close the achievement gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged have, until now, lacked a key ingredient: an early and systematic foundation in the correspondence between letters and sounds,’ say authors Anastasia de Waal and Nicholas Cowen.

However, the authors warn of the critical dangers of increasing government control over what happens in the classroom. Central prescription disallows for individual context and erodes teacher professionalism and their responsiveness to pupils’ needs. They urge the government to draw on the knowledge and understanding that teachers have, rather than that of Whitehall bureaucrats.

The report Ready to Read? can be found here

For more information ring:

Anastasia de Waal, Head of Family and Education: 020 7799 6677 (w).

Note to editors:

The Civitas Supplementary Schools project uses a systematic synthetic phonics course called The Butterfly Book by Irina Tyk. It will be made publicly available by Civitas later this month. For more details, and to request a review copy, please contact Deputy Director Robert Whelan on 0207 799 6677.