Synthetic Phonics

Phonics Readers Outperform Their Peers

Children in Clackmannanshire in Scotland who have been taught to read using "synthetic phonics" are more than three years ahead of their peers by the end of primary school, a study has found.

The program, piloted in nineteen primary schools, was part of a seven-year study conducted by psychologists at St Andrews and Hull universities. From Year 1 stage, three hundred children spent twenty minutes a day learning the technique.

At the end of Year 7, when the children were around eleven years old, they had a reading age of fifteen.

Experts told the UK House of Commons education select committee in February 2005 that schools that use only phonics to teach children to read outperform those using the mixture of methods recommended in the Government's national literacy strategy.

Synthetic phonics involves blending letter sounds to form words, rather than recognising words on sight.

The system is now in use at three hundred schools in Scotland and England.

But language and early years expert Marian Whitehead urged caution in hailing phonics as the "magic answer" in the early years.

She said, "I think up to the age of six, children must have a very broad and rich experience of literature. Then when children emerge as readers they may benefit from phonics. We must not take too narrow an approach that pushes children into small pieces of text and away from books."

She said the intensive coaching the children in the study received could have helped them do well.

"I would ask, are the children still committed and passionate readers and do they read a range of different texts?"

Findings on synthetic phonics are available at www.scotland.gov.uk/publications/recent (Nursery World, 24 February 2005)