Synthetic Phonics

Q&A: synthetic phonics

A report today recommends a bigger role for "synthetic phonics" in teaching children to read in primary schools. Polly Curtis explains what phonics is and how it can help

What is synthetic phonics? Synthetic phonics is often described as a "back to basics" system of teaching children to read. It teaches pupils to recognise the sounds of individual letters, and then blends of letters such as "sh", "th" and "ee".

Pupils build up gradually toward "decoding" whole words from their constituent parts, for example "s-t-r-ee-t".

Phonics was the dominant teaching system until the 1960s when new methods arrived, such as teaching children to learn whole words without mastering the alphabet "by rote".

Those in favour of the more traditional system say it teaches children very quickly how to read almost any word they encounter.

But critics of the method have argued that while children can read individual words, they often do not understand what the words mean.

Why is it being debated now? A trial of synthetic phonics involving 300 schoolchildren in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, published earlier this year, proved hugely beneficial in accelerating how quickly children can read words.

By the age of 11, those children taught using synthetic phonics were three years ahead of their peers in reading skills.

The debate then became political when the Tories made it an election issue.

How do children learn now? The national literacy strategy has a combined approach which uses an element of phonics, along with learning whole words - and their meaning - at a glance.

What's going to happen now? Jim Rose, the former schools inspector whose interim report published today will recommend the use of phonics, will publish a full and final report in January. But the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, has already promised to reform the teaching strategy to meet his first recommendations, to introduce phonics as a "fast and furious" introduction to learning to read.

Ms Kelly faced accusations this morning that she was simply adopting Tory policy, but she insisted that actually she was building on what is already in the curriculum.

Thursday December 1, 2005

With much gratitude to the brilliant 'Guardian Unlimited' website.