Representatives in the UKLA in England, and now in Australia, work hard to undermine the phonics check

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

This article was brought to my attention and, again, I am utterly dismayed (beyond dismayed in truth) to find that yet another representative of the United Kingdom Literacy Association is working hard to undermine the advent of a phonics check - this time in Australia:

Paul Gardner is the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) Ambassador for Australia and is an academic in the School of Education at Curtin University. He is also a member of the Western Australian Council of the Australian Literacy Educators Association (ALEA).

The article is full of misinformation and misguided 'opinion'. It even includes deeply worrying and misleading untruths - and I simply have not got the time to unpick the whole of the article's content. I will provide a few quick comments, however, in further messages via this thread. I will also add links to pieces I have written re the phonics check in England's context to save me the time of repeating some of the points I make.

You are witnessing that history is repeating itself in Australia regarding vociferous phonics check' 'detractors'. One would have hoped that such people involved in 'literacy' would build on our experiences in England. Let's hope that Minister Simon Birmingham can hold fast in his resolve and appreciation that introducing a phonics check in Australia should have enormous benefits for teachers and children alike.

Here is Paul Gardner's piece:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19239

The fallacy of the phonics screening check for Australia

Paul Gardner (23 August 2017)

The argument that phonics is the best way to teach early reading and that Australia must follow the path of England by implementing a Phonics Screening Check (PSC) for 6 year olds, is both powerful and fallacious.

It is powerful because the Minister for Education, Simon Birmingham, supported by The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) strongly advocates its implementation. The determination of this advocacy is signified by the fact that the UK Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, visited Australia in April of this year to speak on the subject. He was introduced by Jennifer Buckingham of the CIS. The triumvirate of the two Ministers and the researcher from the think-tank make an impressive alliance.

Unfortunately, the argument offered by this triumvirate in support of a Phonics Screening Check for Australian school children obfuscates rather than informs debate. Jennifer Buckingham's recent polemic in the West Australian (Opinion 8th August 2017), is indicative of the alt-truth behind the rhetoric of the triumvirate.

Although the type of phonics being advocated is not mentioned, we can deduce that as England is the aspiring model, synthetic phonics is being recommended. In England schools are legally bound to teach reading exclusively through synthetic phonics. This is in spite of decades of research that overwhelmingly supports the finding that a balanced approach to reading, with the inclusion of phonics, is required if students are to both decode fluently and comprehend effectively. The English Government has ignored this research and we might ask why would anyone want Australia to follow that mistake?

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

This comment below written by Paul Gardner is plain wrong - unfounded - and any representative of a literacy organisation in England should surely know this:

The English Government has ignored this research

The English Government has gone to great lengths to investigate how best to teach reading - I should know having been involved in the debate in England for many years as an individual and also as a representative of the UK Reading Reform Foundation. Successive governments in England looked into both the international research and the leading-edge practice in primary schools.

Following a parliamentary inquiry by the Education select committee, Sir Jim Rose was commissioned to conduct an independent inquiry into the teaching of reading and his findings included the recommendation of adopting the 'Simple View of Reading' as a 'useful conceptual framework'. The, then, Department for Education and Skills accepted Sir Jim Rose's findings and the Simple View of Reading concept replaced the 'Searchlights multi-cueing reading strategies' that were previously introduced through the National Literacy Strategy of 1998.

Please note the links to the inquiries in England via this page:

http://www.iferi.org/evidence/

UK: House of Commons ‘Teaching Children to Read’ (March 2005)

UK: ‘Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading Final Report, Jim Rose’ (March 2006)

This is what Sir Jim Rose had to say about schools that were observed for his independent national review of teaching children to read in 2005/6:

“We spent a huge amount of time observing practice and noting the spectacular success of systematic synthetic phonics when we found it, sometimes in classes where a significant number of beginners were learning English as an additional language.”

This 'Simple View of Reading' is informed entirely by the findings of research conducted internationally - the original concept was introduced by researchers Gough and Tunmer in 1986.

The Simple View of Reading model highlights that being a reader in the full sense is dependent upon the technical ability to be able to lift the words off the page along with the language comprehension capacity to be able to understand the words that have been lifted and this is now the basis of England's statutory National Curriculum (2014).

The official guidance for England makes it clear that alphabetic code knowledge (the letter/s-sound correspondences) needs to be taught explicitly and incrementally along with the phonics skill of decoding (synthesising) all-through-the-printed-word for the technical skill of lifting the word off the page. Alongside this of course the need for developing language comprehension, and being steeped in a literature-rich culture is made clear in the guidance too.

What is also made clear (but many teachers don't follow this or understand this) is that lifting the words off the page should not be via word-guessing from multi-cueing (such as looking at the pictures and guessing). This guidance is totally research-informed and the Government in England has done extraordinarily well to include this in its official National Curriculum and in its 'Core Criteria' for evaluating a phonics programme.

A useful diagram of the Simple View of Reading (and I added another for the simple view of writing designed along the same lines):

https://phonicsinternational.com/The_Si ... _model.pdf

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Here are some examples of pieces that I have written - one in response to David Reedy, also a representative of the United Kingdom Literacy Association:

Debbie Hepplewhite’s direct response to David Reedy’s suggestions expressed in the ‘Teach Primary’ magazine, April 2013: ‘The Great Debate – Is it time to ditch the Y1 Phonics Screening Test?’

https://phonicsinternational.com/reedy_response.pdf

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Debbie Hepplewhite’s response to talks and discussions held on
27th November 2012 at the Westminster Education Forum Keynote Seminar: Testing and assessment in primary schools

https://phonicsinternational.com/Westmi ... ite%20.pdf

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Anyone interested in this issue may be interested to have a look at blogger Andrew Old's post about arguments against the phonics check - I've included this here as he refers to literacy results and correlation between phonics and wider reading results. Notably, David Reedy's name crops up in the list of signatories against the phonics check in England:

The arguments against the phonics screening check have been discredited

https://teachingbattleground.wordpress. ... scredited/

Looking at the more detailed results from here (Table 14) we can break down performance in the KS1 assessment by the results of the phonics screening check. The differences between those who passed 1st time (blue), those who passed 2nd time (red) and those who didn’t pass (orange) are striking.

By the way, Andrew Old is a secondary maths teacher with no direct interest in the teaching of phonics - he's just a great, logical blogger!

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

England's statutory National Curriculum:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... s-of-study

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Dr Jennifer Buckingham puts the record straight after worrying misinformation given in Paul Gardner's opinion piece:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.as ... 248&page=1

Facts about the phonics screening check

By Jennifer Buckingham - posted Monday, 28 August 2017

It’s astonishing that much of what is written in opposition to the Phonics Screening Check is inaccurate, given that information about it is very easy to find.

The UK government publishes a collection of official statistics and makes available a useful amount of data on the results of the Phonics Screening Check each year. Technical reports and evaluations are also easy to find.

Sadly, the Check’s critics seem to not bother to research their subject, leading to the spread of misinformation and impoverishing public debate over its value.

There are a number of common criticisms of the Phonics Screening Check, all of which have been repeatedly refuted, but which are worth revisiting.

Jennifer addresses a number of claims against the advent of a phonics check. Do read the whole piece - it's not long.