Category Archives: News

“The future doesn’t have to be like the past” by Sir Jim Rose

While England may not top PISA’s international league tables, we almost certainly surpass our international counterparts in the amount and pace of educational reform that governments of all stripes have generated since the Education Reform Act in 1988.* In a nutshell, the aim of these reforms has been ‘to raise standards and narrow gaps’ in pupil performance.

Headline news has recently focused yet again on falling standards of education as national examination results for 16 year-olds this year show that: ‘GCSE grades have seen the biggest ever fall in the overall pass rate in the history of the exams.’ These grades apply to schools in the state sector and stand in sharp contrast, to the independent, private sector where more than a third of the children achieved the highest grade of ‘A’ – nearly five times the national average.

The private sector in England now stands at around 7% of the school population and is way beyond the means of the great majority of parents. Lloyds Bank recently estimated the costs of sending one child to private school from reception to Year 13 as £156,653 – annual fees having nearly doubled from an average of £7,308 in 2003 to £13,341 in 2016.

sir-michael-wilshaw-quote

In a speech, earlier this year, our Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, delivered a scathing attack on the ideologies of both left and right-wing politics, which he holds responsible for a woeful lack of progress on narrowing the achievement gap between socio-economic groups. He said that, despite a range of initiatives, including the Pupil Premium**, no real difference has been made over the last decade:

‘The needle has barely moved. In 2005, the attainment gap between free school meal and non-FSM pupils in secondary schools was 28 percentage points. It is still 28 percentage points now.’

‘Our failure to improve significantly the educational chances of the poor disfigures our school system. It scars our other achievements. It stands as a reproach to us all.’

It is hardly surprising, that this has prompted a resurgence of fierce debate about the stubborn obstacles in the way of boosting the attainment of children from low income families and narrowing the gap in educational performance between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers.

The debate has been further inflamed by recent government proposals to provide more selective, state grammar schools ‘to give parents a wider choice of schools’ irrespective of their background circumstances.

All of this has coincided with the latest national curriculum assessments for children in the final year of primary school (11yr-olds) showing that fewer pupils reached the expected standard in reading than in writing and mathematics. Moreover, evidence of lasting improvements from numerous targeted interventions to help struggling readers is rare. It seems that hard won, early gains from programmes designed to help them ‘catch-up’ tend to fade out as they fail to keep pace with the overall rate of progress of their year groups.

It is little comfort to know that some of these problems are not unique to England. However, some would say that we are the product of a historical past that has led to a more stratified society than many of our international counterparts, and that divisions between state and private education are at the root of these problems. One of our most visionary and dynamic erstwhile school ministers – now Lord Andrew Adonis – commented on the divide between state and private education:

‘Over the entire second half of the 20th century, these prejudices made it exceptionally hard to do more than fiddle around at the margins of state-private partnership. This, in turn, bred a deep fatalism which is with us still. Everyone knows that the status quo is terrible – rigid separation between most of the nation’s most privileged and powerful schools and the rest. Yet no-one has a credible plan or will to do much about it except say how bad it is, why it’s someone else’s fault, and why it will never change because, well, this is England, it’s deep and cultural, and it all began with Henry VIII. It’s the same fatalism which greeted gridlock in central London before the congestion charge, hospital waiting lists before patients’ rights, and rain stopping play at Wimbledon before the roof.

The call now is for activists not fatalists. The future doesn’t have to be like the past.’

In a bold attempt to achieve a strong ‘state-private partnership’, he paved the way for academising the school system – a major reform in England which, though not without criticism, remains a firm commitment of the present administration.

However, progress has been patchy. These radical systemic/organisational changes have yet to make the looked for impact on helping less well-off children scale the rock face of disadvantage. For them it is much like bicycling a ‘penny farthing’ uphill – the higher they get the harder it becomes. Well-off parents, it seems, are able to equip their children with an Olympic class bike in the shape of private schooling that boosts their rate of progress. So what might we do, or do differently to make sure all children have an educational super bike?

It is of first importance, not to lower our educational expectations for disadvantaged youngsters. There are some telling examples of those from the most unpromising background circumstances succeeding against the odds. Moreover, by no means all privately educated youngsters from prestigious schools ‘make it big’ – so caveat emptor.

Secondly, school inspections show that schools of all types vary in quality ranging, in OFSTED terms, from ‘outstanding’ to ‘in need of improvement’. This suggests that systemic change alone is unlikely to be the tide that lifts all boats. It is trite but true to say that to be successful such change must secure high quality teaching irrespective of school type or location – hence, we would do well to curb our appetite for systemic reform and put more effort into the professional development of teachers and training those who support them in the classroom.

While it ought to be a given that every school should endow all of its children with the advantage of high quality teaching, inspection reports show this not to be the case. Rather, the picture remains one of too much variation in the quality of teaching within and between schools. The well-worn mantra that no school can be better than its teachers needs more that a facelift. It needs a change of heart.

This part of the forest might also benefit from a clearer definition of what ‘high quality’ looks like. In other words, establish a common language for a discourse on optimal teaching (and learning). Some promising developments worth close attention have ‘moved the needle’ by encouraging schools to be ‘self-improving’. One recent piece of research points to a positive impact on narrowing the gap in the reading performance of disadvantaged primary children by means of cost effective, well-taught phonic programmes (Centre for Economic Performance Paper No.1425 April 2016).

We do not yet know how well these gains are sustained for example, when children move from primary to secondary education. However, OFSTED Annual Reports show that, in this respect at least, the primary sector is doing rather better than the secondary sector in narrowing the literacy gap – much to the credit of primary teachers. Given that we know far more about how to teach children to read and write than ever before there should be no excuses for poor teaching in this territory.

The future does not have to be like the past, nor ought the best we can do now be the best that we should hope for. All that said, if we are to secure high quality teaching for all children in England, reformers and policy makers would do well to heed the words of Alvin Toffler: “Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.”

*The Education Reform Act 1988 is widely regarded as the most important single piece of education legislation in EnglandWales and Northern Ireland since the ‘Butler’ Education Act 1944. (Wikipaedia).

**The pupil premium is additional funding for publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils of all abilities and to close the gaps between them and their peers.

Jim Rose

9th September 2016

The Dyslexia Debate and a Response by Sir Jim Rose

IFERI is pleased to present a new paper by Sir Jim Rose, which was written as a response to Professor Julian Elliott’s recent presentation at Macquarie University, Australia.

Please click here to watch the presentation: The Dyslexia Debate

Sir Jim Rose

The Dyslexia Debate: A Response by Sir Jim Rose

The range and depth of enlightened thinking that DDOLL (Developmental Disorders of Language and Literacy Network) colleagues have brought to this discussion is riveting. It transcends historic wrangles over the term dyslexia that have done little to take us forward. Belatedly, I should like to add a couple of wild cards to this captivating exchange of views. The purpose in so doing is to explore further what might done to make sure far more of the children within the frame of so-called ‘instructional casualties’ receive consistently high quality teaching of reading and related aspects of literacy. Arguably, if schools could achieve this the benefits to children would be enormous and the need for costly intervention programmes reduced.

First, given that the education profession has access to a vastly greater knowledge of reading development than ever before, why is it that we continue to see confusion, not to say dissent, in schools and teacher training, about the teaching of reading, particularly in respect of phonics and dyslexia?

In the UK, although there has been considerable progress over the last decade, we still suffer from outbreaks of phonic phobia and tiresome tensions between fake opposites, such as, phonics v ‘reading for meaning’. Despite the enactment of a National Curriculum which makes such teaching mandatory, we have not yet achieved universal agreement in schools that teaching children how the alphabet works for reading and writing is crucially important.

The mantra ‘one size does not fit all’ is often chanted against phonics. This suggests that some continue to regard phonics as one of several ‘methods’ from which to select and match to discredited notions of ‘learning styles’, rather than a body of core knowledge and skills that has to be taught and practised. In the case of phonic work, if teachers are not convinced of the value of a regularly applied systematic approach it is hardly surprising that mediocre and poor practice persist. What more might be done to make plain what high quality teaching looks like in this domain?

As Alison Wolf (Review of Vocational Education 2011) said, ‘If assessing learning is hard, assessing the quality of teaching is harder’. Because the latter assessment brings with it concerns about ‘blaming teachers’ for children’s failures in reading it leads to reluctance to tackle what are often straightforward, improvable aspects of practice within the control of the teacher and the school.

England may not top the international league tables of pupil performance but we must be among world leaders in the amount of inspection and testing that takes place in our schools, starting in the primary years. Many years spent as a school inspector observing teaching in England and elsewhere convinced me that there is far more variation in the quality of teaching literacy, including reading, between and within schools than there ought to be. Further, we know the distance between leading and trailing edge teaching is associated with unacceptable variations in pupil performance, and that the impact of poor teaching on children who enter school already behind their peers amplifies their difficulties.

Is it beyond our capabilities to assess the quality teaching without blaming teachers?

My second wild card is to ask what we might learn from other professions. Anecdotes are sometimes useful so here goes…

Last year an unfriendly tree wrote off my car. I survived the crash due to the incredible expertise of the medical profession. This unwelcome event had an upside, however, in that it gave me an opportunity to compare the performance of two life changing professions: medicine and education. I had lots of time to catch up on reading about reading while experiencing our National Health Service at its best. Further, I was able to listen to the 2014 Reith lectures by the acclaimed surgeon Atul Gawande. He declared that he was in ‘the disturbance business’ and explored thorny issues, such as, ‘Why doctors fail’. I then read his book: ‘The Checklist Manifesto – How to get things right’ and watched with his TED talk: ‘How do we heal medicine?checklist-6-319x479Many of Gawande’s insights apply to getting things right in education. As a frontline surgeon, he drew upon keenly observed and detailed analyses of medical practice. His concept of our ‘necessary infallibility’ has much to commend it should we dare to explore more forensically why teaching fails while making sure teachers know that the purpose of so doing is to work with them to improve the quality of teaching and achieve better outcomes for children.

Medicine and education are ‘person-to–person’ services subject to human fallibility and to human ingenuity for solving problems: success is won by learning from our mistakes. Both professions look to research for solutions. They also rely on knowledgeable and skilled practitioners to make sure that as far as possible decisions are ‘evidence-based’ and ‘proven’ in practice. Equally important, they must be capable of making sound judgements when faced with the hard question: ‘what should we do when research is inconclusive, evidence is lacking and doing nothing is not an option?’

Among other things, Gawande suggests that doctors fail through lack of knowledge and, or, ineptitude, that is to say, insufficient skill in applying knowledge. He counts himself among them in these respects. He sees mistakes as opportunities: ’we have an opportunity before us, not just in medicine but in virtually any endeavour. Even the most expert among us can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in place. But will we do it? Are we ready to grab onto the idea? It is far from clear’.

The notion that we should actively build a school and classroom culture that enables teachers and, equally important, enables children as learners, to learn from patterns of mistakes is an idea worth grabbing. Moreover, his ‘Manifesto’ embraces a set of ethical principles and expectations worth taking on board:

“First is an expectation of selflessness: that we who accept responsibility for others – whether we are doctors, lawyers, teachers, public authorities, soldiers or pilots – will place the needs and concerns of those who depend on us above our own. Second is an expectation of skill: that we will aim for excellence in our knowledge and expertise. Third is an expectation of trust-worthiness: that we will be responsible in our personal behaviour toward our charges.

Aviators, however, add a fourth dimension, discipline: discipline in following prudent procedure and in functioning with others.”

For Gawande professional ‘discipline’ is aided by a ‘checklist’ which transforms ‘cowboys into pit crews’. That is indeed a powerful idea – but you must Google his short TED talk to understand it. (Or click at the end of this post to watch it.)

I have rambled on long enough save to ask: is there anything to be said for embracing some of these ideas, including, perhaps, developing a ‘checklist’ for teaching systematic, synthetic phonics?

With special thanks to Macquarie University for allowing us to distribute and use the link to Professor Julian Elliott’s presentation.

Please Help: Get Ghana Reading with Phonics by Phone

Created by the charity Educators International, Phonics by Phone is an ambitious and innovative project which aims to train teachers in remote parts of Ghana. Using the basic mobile that is already in their pocket, teachers will be trained how to teach reading from the beginning, with a specially written phonics course and resources.Ghana Movement

This ingenious solution works by providing 100 Phonics Lessons, specially written by IFERI’s Debbie Hepplewhite and recorded by Sheena Campbell, which are available to download as audio files that teachers can easily access and listen to on their phone. To access or listen to these modules simply click here.project_1273_body_50629_chart_pic_00263

In addition, there is also a very clever assessment project to support and sustain the Phonics by Phone network.  It works from an android phone app which then prints to a tiny micro-printer! Each time the app is used a new assessment is generated – watch the video below to see it in action. Amazing!

A crowd-funding initiative has been established to support this innovative, low-cost project which is already having a huge impact. On an ‘all-or-nothing’ basis the charity has until 7th August to raise the £15k target. They are already more than halfway there – but with only days to go – every donation counts. And if they don’t hit their target – the project will receive no financial help at all.

If you feel that you could support this worthwhile initiative please visit: https://www.launchgood.com/project/help_get_ghana_reading__by_phone#/

Educators International is also keen to connect educators from around the world with some of the teachers in Ghana who are close to qualifying. If you would like to find out more about being a pen-pal mentor to one of the highly committed, volunteer teachers in Ghana please click here to find out more.Ghana boys reading

Michael Stark, one of Educators International’s directors and trustees, urges all those who value literacy and reading to make a difference:

‘If properly taught using phonics, all these children will learn to read and write well, rather than drop out of school early. Help us achieve a miracle – reading success for huge numbers of children in Ghana.’

Educators_International

Please help spread the word and share this blog post with friends and colleagues. Thank you.

The Reading Reform Foundation Conference, March 2015 *updated*

‘From the Rose Review to the New Curriculum. A growing number of schools successfully teach every child to read; the majority still don’t. Why?’

The theme of the Reading Reform Foundation conference (above) drew attention to the fact that some schools achieve very highly despite complex and challenging circumstances. Indeed, London schools, despite being ‘inner city’ schools, are gaining a reputation in England for nationally high standards and some commentators attribute this to the rise in standards particularly in primary schools. Many primary headteachers would attribute their rise in standards to getting the foundations of literacy right by ensuring high-quality Systematic Synthetic Phonics provision within enriched language and literature settings.

The conference was very well-received and attendees included people from America, Spain, Ireland, Scotland and Australia.

Most of the talks were filmed and will be added to this blog posting as the footage becomes available.

Debbie Hepplewhite gave the opening talk, ‘Does it really matter if teachers do not share a common understanding about phonics and reading instruction?’ Having watched the talk via youtube, a number of ‘tweeters’ recommended this video for INSET (In-service training) suggesting that ‘all teachers’ would benefit from watching it!

Debbie’s PowerPoint – click here

Next, Anne Glennie talked about the lack of ambition and lack of phonics training in Scotland with her talk, ‘The Attainment Gap? What about the Teaching Gap?’ – and this is despite the fact that England and other countries internationally paid heed to the Clackmannanshire research (Johnston and Watson) conducted in Scottish schools.

Following Anne was Josie Mingay with her talk, ‘Phonics in the Secondary Classroom’. This talk generated a great deal of interest and Josie had more questions from the audience than anyone else. Clearly we still have weak literacy in many of our secondary schools – and this is surely why ALL teachers need to be trained in reading and spelling instruction, not just infant and primary teachers. In any event, a ‘beginner’ for whom English is a ‘new’ language, isn’t necessarily a five year old.

Sam Bailey was appointed headteacher of a struggling school with results well below national expectations. The theme of her talk was, ‘Transforming the life chances of our children – simple methods, great results’.She described in detail the rapid improvements with the adoption of Systematic Synthetic Phonics programmes (Oxford Reading Tree Floppy’s Phonics Sounds and Letters and Phonics International) in a climate of support, expectation, challenge, and rigour.

Gordon Askew brought his wealth of knowledge and experience to bear for his excellent talk, ‘Assessment, including the Phonics Screening Check and assessing reading at the end of Key Stage One’. To be honest, his talk was not what one might have expected and it turned out to be quite inspirational considering the topic!

Marj Newbury is a retired Early Years teacher with 37 years experience, She has also delivered synthetic phonics training extensively in schools both in the UK and worldwide – including as guest lecturer in her local universities. Marj’s talk, ‘Teacher Training’ not only described her work, but also voiced her concern about changes to the way we are training teachers in England.

Angela Westington HMI CV (Her Majesty’s Inspector) was invited to talk about her very important Ofsted report, ‘How a sample of schools in Stoke-on-Trent teach pupils to read’. Angela has considerable experience of leading and participating in national surveys and what is so important about Angela’s report is the clear description of strong phonics and reading practice and weak practice. Angela was not filmed but her ‘Stoke-on-Trent’ report is a must read and you can find it via the link below:

Stoke-on-Trent report – click here

Finally, the RRF was very appreciative that Nick Gibb, Minister of State for School Reform, rounded off the conference with his final ministerial speech prior to the general election in the UK, Nick Gibb has been at the forefront at looking closely at the findings of international research to inform reading instruction and championing changes in the statutory National Curriculum to incorporate Systematic Synthetic Phonics. The theme of his talk was, ‘The Importance of Phonics’:

Nick Gibb’s speech – click here

 

A New Paper by Professors James W. Chapman and William E. Tunmer on Reading Recovery

IFERI is delighted to be able to share with you a brand new paper by Professors James W. Chapman and William E. Tunmer, from the Institute of Education at Massey University, New Zealand.

This paper was presented, by invitation, at the 39th Annual Conference of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities (IARLD), Vancouver, Canada, July 8, 2015. Professor James Chapman has been a Fellow of IARLD since 1983.

IARLD (International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities) is an international professional organization dedicated to conducting and sharing research about individuals who have learning disabilities. Fellows of IARLD include premier scientists, educators and clinicians in the field of learning disabilities throughout the world.

For convenience, some extracts and conclusions from the paper are published as part of this blog post. To open or download the complete paper, simply click the title below.

The Literacy Performance of ex-Reading Recovery Students Between Two and Four Years Following Participation on the Program: Is this Intervention Effective for Students with Early Reading Difficulties?

 James W. Chapman and William E. Tunmer

Sustainability of Gains Made in Reading Recovery

Considered together, the PIRLS results for 9-year-old children who had received RR in Year 2, the enrolment data for students receiving support from RT:Lits, and the two New Zealand studies on the sustainability of RR outcomes for discontinued children, show that RR simply has not achieved its primary goals in New Zealand. Clay’s avowal that RR would “clear out of the remedial education system all children who do not learn to read” (Clay, 1987, p. 169), and the RR New Zealand’s website claim that RR operates as an “effective prevention strategy against later literacy difficulties” and, therefore, “may be characterised as an insurance against low literacy levels” (www.readingrecovery.ac.nz/reading_recovery), are without foundation.

Why Does Reading Recovery Fail to Result in Sustainable Gains?

We have argued elsewhere (Chapman et al., 2015) that the effectiveness of RR interacts with where children are located on the developmental progression from pre-reader to skilled reader. Because of limited knowledge of print at the outset of learning to read, and/or developmental delay in acquiring the phonological awareness skills that are essential for learning to read successfully (e.g., Pressley, 2006; Snow & Juel, 2005; Tunmer, Greaney & Prochnow, 2015), a large proportion of young struggling readers operate at low developmental phases of word learning, which Ehri (2005) described as pre-alphabetic and partial-alphabetic phases. Delayed readers who are still in these phases, typically those students who struggle the most with learning to read, will not be able to grasp the alphabetic principle and discover spelling-to-sound relationships on their own or in a program that emphasizes text rather than word level instructional approaches. These students will require more intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically based decoding skills than what is provided in typical RR lessons.

What Should be Done to Improve the Effectiveness of Reading Recovery?

There are serious shortcomings and much-needed improvements in several aspects of RR, including the theoretical underpinnings of the program, the assessment battery which fails to include measures of phonological processing skills, the specific instructional strategies emphasized in the program (e.g., the multiple cues approach to word identification), the manner of program delivery (one-to-one versus instruction in pairs), and the congruence between classroom literacy instruction and the RR program.

Regarding the issue of congruence between classroom literacy instruction and RR, the program was originally developed to complement regular whole language classroom literacy instruction in New Zealand. Clay (1993), nevertheless, claimed that RR was compatible with all types of classroom literacy programs, but she offered no evidence in support of this claim. To test this belief, Center et al. (2001) investigated whether the efficacy of RR varied as a function of the regular classroom literacy program. They compared the effects of RR in “meaning oriented” (i.e., whole language) classrooms and “code-oriented” classrooms (i.e., those that included explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness and alphabetic coding skills). Their results indicated that at the end of the second year of schooling, children in the code-oriented classrooms (regular and RR students combined) significantly outperformed children in the meaning-oriented classrooms on measures of phonological recoding, reading connected text, and invented spelling, as well as on a standardized measure of reading comprehension. Overall, however, Center et al. (2001) reported that the RR students in both types of classrooms failed to reach the average level of their peers on any of the literacy measures. These findings clearly contradict Clay’s (1993) claim that the regular classroom context does not differentially affect the literacy performance of RR children.

Although regular classroom literacy instruction influences the effectiveness of RR, the most serious shortcoming of the program is the differential benefit at the individual level. The program may be useful in the short term for some struggling readers but not others, especially those struggling readers who need help the most. More intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically-based decoding skills is likely to be required than what is normally provided in RR lessons for those who struggle most with learning to read, and for any gains made in RR to have a lasting effect (Iversen, Tunmer & Chapman, 2005; Tunmer & Greaney, 2010).

Slavin et al. (2011) found reading programs for younger children that had less emphasis on phonics, including RR, showed smaller effect sizes than those programs that included phonics. They noted that RR is the most extensively researched and used reading intervention program in the world, but that the outcomes were less than might be expected. Further, Slavin et al. observed that the overall effect size for 18 studies involving paraprofessional or volunteer tutors using structured and intensive programs was about the same as the effect size for RR studies (+0.24 vs. +0.23), despite the very intensive training that RR teachers receive.

Conclusion

The RR program remains largely un-revised in its instructional approach despite clear evidence showing that claims about RR being an insurance against on-going literacy difficulties are without foundation. The New Zealand Reading Recovery website continues to assert the effectiveness of RR; assertions that are not supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s own data (national monitoring reports and PIRLS), or by the two independent studies undertaken in New Zealand on students two to four years following successful completion of the program. If the RR program is not changed to reflect contemporary scientific research on reading interventions, it should be dropped and replaced by a more contemporary, research-based, reading intervention approach, together with more effective literacy instruction in children’s first year of schooling.

See also:

Excellence and equity in literacy education: the case of New Zealand. W.E. Tunmer & J.W. Chapman (eds.) (June, 2015). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/excellence-and-equity-in-literacy-education-william-e-tunmer/?K=9781137415561

Marva Collins, A True American Heroine

marva-collins

Marva Collins did not wait for research, or approval, or even concern herself about being “out of step” with the trends in public education.  When I visited her classroom in Chicago it forever indelibly imprinted, on my mind and spirit, the potential of ALL children if given the right kind of instruction early on.

She was a disciplinarian, had a brilliant intellect, and was totally focused on preparing young children from the ghettos for Harvard and Princeton. And, she succeeded.  I am in awe that she cared enough to give her life in service to others.  The principles of reading instruction were timeless… they are consistent with what we all now cite as “reading science.”  But, she did not suffer fools lightly.  Her approach was definitive, direct, and effective. America and the world lost a great teacher, a dedicated leader, and a compassionate human being.

Marva agreed to serve on the Board of The National Right to Read Foundation. We were truly honored that she would lend her name to the cause we both felt so passionate about, because we loved the little children who were being used as “guinea pigs” in a giant failed experiment in disproven reading pedagogy.   This pedagogy has been advocated and implemented for much of the 20th Century, and continues today.  Let us all pick up the torch of reading freedom that Marva carried so courageously during her lifetime.

The Marva Collins Way and other publications are available for others to apply and model.  The best thing we can do to honor Marva Collins would be to emulate and replicate her educational practices.  Her books are available on Amazon now.

We will miss her.

marva collins quote

 

The Right Honorable Robert W. Sweet, Jr

The National Right to Read Foundation

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_13?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=marva+collins+books&sprefix=marva+collins%2Caps%2C154

Marva Collins died on 24th June 2015, in a hospice near her home in South Carolina. She was 78.

Special exam arrangements for dyslexia veering out of control

Special exam arrangements for dyslexia veering out of control

Julian Elliott, Durham University

The new English Literature GCSE might be contravening the 2010 Equality Act, according to concerns raised by a teacher. This raises serious questions about which disabilities should lead to students being given special dispensation in exams.

The new GCSE, which will be taught from September 2016, requires students to remember a number of poems and analyse at least one. Mary Meredith, a teacher and blogger who works with pupils with special learning needs, argued in an open letter to education secretary Nicky Morgan that those with dyslexia may be disadvantaged unfairly because they typically experience problems with verbal memory. She has asked for the exam to be adjusted for dyslexic pupils.

There are a number of problems with this argument. The usage of the term “dyslexia” has expanded to the point that it has now lost much of its explanatory value. Initially it was used to describe very rare cases in which people could make little or no sense of the written word. Now it has become the diagnosis of choice to describe individuals exhibiting one or more of a wide range of cognitive difficulties involving areas such as memory, speed of processing, attention, concentration, analysis and synthesis, organisation and self-regulation – controlling oneself and one’s actions.

While not all those with reading difficulties experience memory problems, and not all those with memory problems struggle with literacy difficulties, there is clear evidence that a greater proportion of pupils with reading difficulties encounter problems with short-term or working memory. However, working memory appears not to be a particularly powerful predictor of reading difficulties. Short-term memory essentially involves holding information in your mind for short periods of time, for example trying not to forget a phone number while you struggle to find a pencil. If this information slips away, it is typically gone forever – what is called “catastrophic loss”.

Working memory is very similar but also involves the process of doing something with the information while we are holding onto it, for example, undertaking a complex calculation in our heads. These types of memory are rather different from those involved in remembering information that has been stored for a longer period – such as the ability to recite a poem from memory or the reasons behind the Russia revolution. The evidence that poor readers have particular difficulty with this latter form of “long-term” memory is much weaker, with inconsistent findings from research studies.

Qualifying for special assistance

We cannot assume that someone with a diagnosis of dyslexia has one particular type of memory problem or, indeed, any memory problem at all. There is also the question about how we should respond to those people who have poor memories but are not considered to be dyslexic. It would be a travesty to automatically diagnose all those with working memory problems as dyslexic even though, anecdotally, this seems to be an increasing tendency in university disability services and in some school contexts.

Students’ memory abilities will be normally distributed within the general population – this is typically the case for any cognitive process. So how can we best respond to those who argue that their memory difficulties disadvantage them in examinations? One solution could be to establish a national screening programme to identify all those who encounter various memory difficulties and who might be deemed to need special arrangements. Clearly, this is not feasible or desirable.

Alternatively, if we conclude that all examinations discriminate against those with memory problems, there would be a logical argument to be made for scrapping examinations that place any burden upon recall. Open book exams, where a student has the relevant information in front of them, is one possible solution, but it might also be challenged on the grounds that those with working memory difficulties are still disadvantaged. As I hope it is becoming clear, there is an inherent weakness of logic here.

The go-to diagnosis.
Dyslexia via Groenning/www.shutterstock.com

In reality, examinations are not just designed to test a student’s memory. They tap the ability to utilise knowledge and understanding in ways that are underpinned by a whole range of intellectual abilities. These include processes such as memory, speed of processing, attention, concentration, analysis and synthesis, organisation and self-regulation. But herein lies a major problem: that’s a very similar list (see the second paragraph above) that is often used to describe those with a dyslexic disability and who seek and are offered special assistance or modifications in exams.

Special arrangements were derived to give everyone a fair opportunity to access and engage in examinations. Where someone has a physical disability it makes obvious sense that they should be able to record their responses in alternative ways, for example, by dictation or a modified keyboard. Where a student is blind, it is wholly appropriate that a person or a keyboard should read the questions (and the candidate’s responses) back to them. In such situations, the individual is getting no additional assistance that gives them an advantage over other candidates.

However, where the person’s difficulty involves the same processes as those being used to differentiate between candidates’ academic performance, for example, remembering detail, or being able to marshal and express a complex argument in a time-constrained period, we run the risk of helping some while disadvantaging others.

Where the underlying problems concern cognitive processes such as memory, processing speed or attention, the preferred strategy should not be to modify examination conditions. Instead, it should be to assist students to develop strategies that can assist them to perform as well as possible, targeting additional resources towards the provision of workshops to improve relevant study skills.

Out of control

Currently, understandings and practices around this issue are so confused that the existing systems are getting increasingly out of control. Universities, for example, are provided with assessments and recommendations from privately funded educational psychologists that are often difficult to challenge.

The fact that many of these reports are severely flawed – for example, many still employ the now widely discredited IQ discrepancy criterion for dyslexia – seems not to be considered problematic by politicians and civil servants, whose focus appears to rest primarily around the increasing cost of provides resources for more and more diagnosed dyslexic students.

If individualised resourcing and exam accommodations are to be provided for particular cognitive weaknesses, we need a more sophisticated understanding of exactly which difficulties, at what level of severity, are appropriate for special assistance. What should be more widely understood, however, is that these processes are significant in the way we currently differentiate between students’ academic performance. So to assist one person, but not another, in this fashion throws up serious questions about equity and fairness.

The Conversation

Julian Elliott is Professor of Education and Principal of Collingwood College at Durham University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Reading Between the Lines

Recent comments from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, suggest that national testing might be about to return to Scotland. I do support our forward-thinking curriculum, but I also feel there are bits of it where we could do better. We cannot ignore the uncomfortable truth that, when it comes to literacy, we are in a worse place now than we were two years ago. Pointing the finger of blame at secondary teachers is not only entirely unfair, but it is missing the point. We are all teachers of literacy, but when children are unable to access the language and learning of their curriculum at secondary school, it is ludicrous to expect subject specialists to have the time – or knowledge – required to teach children how to read, write and spell properly.

‘Learning to read’ should be sorted out early on in primary; enabling children to go forward as confident readers who can then ‘read to learn’. We talk so much about the attainment gap, but fail to realise that it is manifested in low literacy levels. We need to ensure that all of our learners, but especially the most disadvantaged, are equipped with the necessary literacy skills to achieve success at primary school and beyond. Until we tackle the persistent underachievement in reading in primary school, the gap will not go away. It will grow, becoming a black hole at secondary level that swallows our least able learners as they try to compete in the uneven playing fields of our classrooms.

Is testing the answer? I’d argue that it would certainly help. I am not advocating a return to the 5-14 style of assessment, nor am I suggesting that we should implement high-stakes testing, such as the SATs, that cause such stress in England.  However, I do believe that we could adopt their Phonics Screening Check, which is a simple, light-touch assessment, administered by the class teacher in Primary 2.  This identifies children who are at risk of literacy failure by assessing their knowledge of the essential letter/sound correspondences, as well as the skill of being able to apply this knowledge through blending and reading words. Use of this test would also provide us with data and a benchmark to see how we are doing in those crucial early stages. Since the introduction of the screening check in England, the number of children passing it has been rising steadily. Last year 74% of Year 1(P2) pupils met the expected standard of phonic decoding, compared with 69% in 2013 and 58% in 2012. I like to think that if we introduced the same test here in Scotland, our children’s scores would compare favourably. However, given the recent SSLN results, I’m not brave enough to make a bet.

Anne Glennie is a literacy consultant and a founding member of IFERI (International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction)

As published in TES Scotland, Friday 12th June 2015, No.2423

For more information about IFERI and the Phonics Screening Check click here

Dr Marlynne Grant at researchED 2014

Dr Marlynne Grant is a chartered educational psychologist and a member of the Reading Reform Foundation. She is also the author of the high quality phonics programme, Sound Discovery. Her must-see talk below, which was given at researchED 2014, is about ‘What works to achieve accurate and confident literacy for whole classes of children, from Reception to Secondary’. The talk is in three parts, all are listed below.

The slides from Dr Grant’s talk are also available here: http://www.workingoutwhatworks.com/en-GB/Resource-library/Videos/2014/rED-v-marlynne-grant-2014

Thanks to researchED!

 

Samuel Blumenfeld author of Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers and The Whole Language/OBE Fraud has died.

Author of many books and articles on the topic of what’s wrong with education, Blumenfeld has been described as a ‘lonely voice in the wilderness’. His latest book, “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children,” , co-authored with Alex Newman, was published last month (May 2015) by WND Books.

Much of Blumenfeld’s work was dedicated to exposing what he saw as a faulty method of teaching children to read and championing an alternative. His 1973 book, “The New Illiterates,” blamed the “whole-word” method of reading instruction for dyslexia and reading disabilities in many children.

Blumenfeld’s answer was always the same – intensive, systematic phonics. In 1983, he published “Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers” as a way to help parents, teachers and tutors teach children to read in an easy, effective manner.

IFERI acknowledges Samuel Blumenfeld’s contribution to the promotion of effective reading instruction.