Synthetic Phonics

OFSTED Publishes 'Teaching of Phonics' Paper

In October 2001, the UK's OFSTED published a paper on the teaching of phonics.

It stated that although good practice exists in schools and there have been improvements since the implementation of the National Literacy Strategy, it remains the view of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools that there is still a significant proportion of schools in which the importance of phonics in improving pupils' reading and spelling has not been recognised.

These schools share common shortcomings:

• the pace of learning is too slow;
• there is a failure in Years 1 and 2 (ages 5-7) to consolidate and build sufficiently upon the foundations of phonic knowledge and skills;
• pupils' mental capacity for the higher-order skills of comprehension and composition is restricted by the attention they have to give to reading and spelling individual words.

Taken together these features exert a downward pressure on standards, making it more difficult to improve reading and writing at key stage 1 and adding to the difficulties of raising standards at Key Stage 2 (age 7-11).

Overall, phonics teaching has increased significantly since the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy and the debate is no longer about whether phonic knowledge and skills should be taught, but how best to teach them.

However, although more phonics are being taught, it is still not having enough impact on standards of English at the end of Key Stage 1 (age 7).

In 2001, almost one third of Year 2 (age 6-7) pupils failed to reach level 2B in reading and more than four in ten failed to reach level 2B in writing.