England: Nick Gibb, Headteachers who resist teaching phonics failing students

News articles, interviews, research, events and lots more - ready for your comments.
Post Reply
User avatar
Debbie_Hepplewhite
Posts: 2499
Joined: Sat May 23, 2015 4:42 pm

England: Nick Gibb, Headteachers who resist teaching phonics failing students

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Minister for School Standards, Nick Gibb, speaks at the researchED conference, September 2017:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/20 ... um=twitter
Headteachers who resist teaching phonics are failing students, minister warns

Headteachers who resist teaching phonics are denying students the “education they deserve”, the Schools Minister has warned.

Attacking heads who refuse to accept the “overwhelming evidence” in favour of phonics, Nick Gibb claimed that “fallacious” beliefs about reading had “blighted” the education outcomes of “generations of children”.

Speaking at an education conference yesterday, Mr Gibb said that whilst the Government was winning the “war” over reading instruction, “pernicious arguments” made by some academics were undermining efforts to improve literacy rates.

His warning follows years of fierce debate over phonics, a reading system which requires pupils to sound out letters and words.

Whilst teaching phonics has been a mandatory requirement since 2007, several academics continue to rail against it being taught in schools.

They include Dr Andrew Davis of Durham University, who has previously claimed that phonics is a “mechanical exercise” which can put children off reading.

His views are shared by a number of heads across the country, who continue to teach the “look and see” method alongside phonics - a technique in which children learn to recognise words through repetition and the use of picture books.

But advocates of the new system say there is little evidence to support a “mixed teaching approach”, and that numerous studies show phonics has led to considerable improvements in literacy rates.

“For over a century, war has waged in education over the most effective means of teaching children to read,” Mr Gibb told attendees gathered at the ResearchED conference.

“Finally, this fight is coming to an end thanks to the strong evidence in favour of systematic synthetic phonics.

“Sadly, though, as so often when a losing argument is in its death throes, many decry the false dichotomy between teaching using phonics and using these now discredited approaches to reading.

“Instead, many educationalists advocate using a mix of methods, combining guessing at words using context with some phonics training thrown in. Again, the evidence clearly shows that this is not an effective means of teaching children to read.

“These fallacious and un-evidenced beliefs about reading instruction have blighted the early education of generations of children around the world.”

He added that whilst critics continue to resist phonics, campaigning by ministers and teachers had helped sparked a “reading revolution in England’s schools”.

His comments are supported by official statistics published by the Department for Education, which show that 147,000 more six-year-olds became fluent readers in 2016 compared with the same period five years ago.

Whilst reading attainment levels remained static under the previous Labour Government, in 2016, four out of five children aged six reached the expected standard - a 23 per cent increase since 2012. The figure is even higher for 7-year-olds, with 91 per cent now considered literate.

Recent research published by the London School of Economics also found that teaching phonics led to greater improvements in reading among disadvantaged children compared with students taught using other systems.

Meanwhile, a report commissioned by the Australian Government concluded that“direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read.”

It continued: “Where there is unsystematic or no phonics instruction, children’s literacy progress is significantly impeded, inhibiting their initial and subsequent growth in reading accuracy, fluency, writing, spelling and comprehension.”

In order to raise education standards further, Mr Gibb warned that teachers must be led by the facts instead of relying on methods which have been debunked for years.

Doubling down on the Government’s commitment to improve social mobility, he added that the “battle” would continue until phonics was recognised as the correct technique “in all classrooms”.

“There are few – if any – more important policies for improving social mobility than ensuring all pupils are taught to read effectively,” he continued.

“Those opposed to the use of systematic phonics instruction are standing between pupils and the education they deserve.

“Unfortunately, the pernicious arguments that ignore the evidence in favour of phonics still abound and are having a detrimental effect on the take up of phonics in some parts of the country.

“It is important to make and re-make the arguments so that all pupils benefit from the very best teaching methods in primary school.”
User avatar
Debbie_Hepplewhite
Posts: 2499
Joined: Sat May 23, 2015 4:42 pm

Re: England: Nick Gibb, Headteachers who resist teaching phonics failing students

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

A government-commissioned three year survey conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found that teachers views of phonics and the Year One Phonics Screening Check varied across the country - and that it looked highly likely that many teachers include multi-cueing word-guessing alongside their systematic synthetic phonics provision.

This leads to a 'mixed methods' approach and not a 'systematic synthetic phonics' approach which warns against the use of multi-cueing word-guessing as this damages at least some children's reading profile (reading habits and capacity to read accurately).

Based on first-hand observations and video footage, I drew up a graphic some time ago based on the Simple View of Reading model to illustrate how different schools provide their early reading instruction differently, see:

The Simple View of Schools' Phonics Provision:

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/Sim ... chools.pdf
User avatar
Debbie_Hepplewhite
Posts: 2499
Joined: Sat May 23, 2015 4:42 pm

Re: England: Nick Gibb, Headteachers who resist teaching phonics failing students

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

From my interest in this field, I have also observed that when people refer to 'phonics' provision, what they mean by this can actually be very different.

This leads to deep misunderstanding about what phonics provision can 'look like' or consist of.

The Education Endowment Foundation, for example, on its webpage describing 'Phonics', refers to vocabulary, comprehension and spelling being separate from phonics provision:
For older readers who are still struggling to develop reading skills, phonics approaches may be less successful than other approaches such as Reading comprehension strategies and Meta-cognition and self-regulation. The difference may indicate that children aged 10 or above who have not succeeded using phonics approaches previously require a different approach, or that these students have other difficulties related to vocabulary and comprehension which phonics does not target.
Phonics can be an important component in the development of early reading skills, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.However, it is also important that children are successful in making progress in all aspects of reading including vocabulary development, comprehension and spelling, which should be taught separately and explicitly.
The sentences that I have highlighted in red from the EEF statements above are just PLAIN WRONG.

Very important to note, children aged 10 or above 'who have not succeeded using phonics approaches previously' DO NOT require a 'different approach'. This is a very damaging, flawed statement and it is deeply disturbing that EEF personnel have written this. IFERI committee member, Gordon Askew, writes about this issue via his blog:

http://ssphonix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/ ... etely.html

Phonics provision should be provided by phonics programmes according to government advice since acceptance of Sir Jim Rose's recommendations in his independent review (2006).

HIgh-quality systematic synthetic phonics programmes include spelling, vocabulary enrichment and language comprehension.

What we can see here, then, is the very different 'understanding' of what phonics provision is. Some people's comments give the impression that they think of 'phonics' as only teaching the alphabetic code and decoding.

I have started to describe this limited view of phonics as 'impoverished phonics provision' in contrast to the provision of 'content-rich phonics programmes' which include, as I have said above, vocabulary enrichment. language comprehension and spelling.

I think this is a very important issue.

Not only do we need to distinguish between systematic synthetic phonics provision with, or without, multi-cueing word-guessing, we also need to distinguish between 'impoverished phonics' and 'content-rich phonics programmes' to get a clearer understanding of the differences in practice in different classes and schools.
Post Reply