This is a message provided by a parent via a private forum but I believe it is so important, and reflects such a common state of affairs in far too many schools in English-speaking countries, that I asked permission to copy the message to the IFERI forum as a typical example of the frustrations experienced by many parents (and their poor children), and to continue to highlight the potential of the 'universal' uptake of England's Year One Phonics Screening Check.
Here is the message - and I shall comment further below the message:
This message, then, is important, worrying and indeed fascinating for a number of reasons which I shall endeavour to outline here:
I would agree that teachers shouldn't be held responsible for teaching what they haven't been taught at Uni but what about the school administration team's responsibility to create a culture of school improvement and self-reflection in its teachers?
And the education department's responsibility to provide appropriate guidance to schools?
I say this because recent dealings with my son's primary school have left me feeling a little 'parent bashed'.
My son in Year 2 is having difficulties with reading fluency (rather than accuracy) and spelling. The school promotes a multi-cueing approach to reading unfamiliar words in text, does not provide decodable readers to beginning readers and promotes memorising lists of sight words. Guidance to parents is to "avoid sounding out words, or encouraging students to sound out, as their knowledge of phonics is limited at this stage and it slows down their reading and causes child to lose meaning" and that 'frightened' is an acceptable miscue for 'scared' etc.
We were told in our latest meeting that the school sought guidance from the Primary Support - Literacy team of the WA Education department. The Literacy support team believed that the inclusion of synthetic phonics as a recommended approach in early years classrooms in the WA Education Director General's Focus 2016 policy document was premature as proper guidance for implementation was not yet available (?) and recommended that the school continue with what they are doing. They provided the Education Endowment Foundation's evidence for Phonics document as their rationale ("Phonics can be an important component in the development or early reading skills, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds"). Another source in the department has since told me that the Literacy support team do also recommend synthetic phonics to schools but the school didn't say this to us as parents. The school admitted to reading only "some" of the literature we had provided.
So there will be no further training in phonics instruction as a school and a refusal to alter the written guidance given to parents encouraging multi-cueing and avoiding sounding-out. The principal also mentioned that he didn't want a situation where teachers were doubting themselves. One of the deputies at the meeting recommended that we should follow her own example which was to not get involved with how her daughter was being taught at the school she attended. What they did offer was for the deputy with a literacy support role to work with my son in Term 2 using the Sounds-Write phonics program and we accepted that offer. Go figure.
Consequently, I am also a big supporter of introducing a mandatory phonics screening check in Australia at least at the end of Yr 1.
The only measures (apart from my informal observations of reading behaviours) that identified my son's difficulties were the UK phonics check, a standardised spelling test and the timed reading tests (TOWRE and YARC) at the beginning of Yr 2. Nothing quantitative I looked at before Year 2 flagged concerns. Perhaps the introduction of a check would encourage a culture of self-reflection?
1)Let us not diminish that there is a real child involved here. The child is making reading progress, but clearly the parent is worried that there are some difficulties with reading fluency and with spelling. Very clearly the school is what we refer to as a 'multi-cueing' or 'mixed methods' school - and yet 'multi-cueing reading strategies' which amount to guessing words from initial letter, picture cues, context cues and 'what would make sense' have been discredited by research for many years - but also what is clear is that either people don't fully understand this, or choose to disregard this. We know for a fact that at least some children's reading and spelling progress, and their self-esteem, can be damaged by the use of 'multi-cueing reading strategies'. This is not a small issue, it is a huge issue for the child - and for other children. How can parents themselves be expected to tackle this when even researchers and politicians know 'multi-cueing strategies' persist and they are even embodied in widespread interventions such as the infamous Reading Recovery programme. Potentially damaging reading strategies taught to the weakest readers!
2) Even in England where Systematic Synthetic Phonics is now embedded in the statutory national curriculum, following a three-year survey of teachers' reading instruction practices and their views on the Year One Phonics Screening Check (which is statutory in England), it became clear that the picture of what teachers actually taught was NOT CLEAR - and it could be that many teachers still employ 'multi-cueing reading strategies' either deliberately or misguidedly. This is an issue for teacher-training, teacher supervisors (senior management) and accountability.
3)The parent who wrote this message is a knowledgeable parent regarding reading instruction, international research and so on, and was prepared and able to pursue this with the school and other official organisations. This revealed a lack of joined-up thinking and provision regarding guidance, training and, actually, accountability. Nowadays there are so many 'organisations' and 'authorities' involved in providing education and in running schools, and in training teachers, and so many people offering different guidance or interpreting guidance differently, that you can see even from this message that the context is a quagmire of officialdom. This is an issue for who is ultimately responsible for unpicking the quagmire of contradictory guidance down to the actual provision for children whether mainstream or special needs. This is an issue of consistency and accountability based on the findings of a body of research and best practice informed by that research.
The parent in the message, surprisingly (at least I was surprised), described that attention had been paid by authorities in Australia to the description of 'phonics' by the Educational Endowment Foundation in England. Oh my goodness - what synchronicity. Only recently I have informally, but heavily, criticised the description of 'phonics' provided on the EEF website and I have taken this up with the organisation on an informal basis (meaning I don't have the time to write an official letter but have spoken with EEF personnel and exchanged emails).
In other words, it is looking like some authoritative people in Australia are able to use the weak and flawed description of 'phonics' on England's Education Endowment Foundation as an excuse for not pushing through with Systematic Synthetic Phonics guidance, training and provision.
I shall draw this to the attention of the Education Endowment Foundation of course.
I shall also link to this thread via IFERI's Parents' Forum.
I suggest that regardless of schools' reading instruction methods and content, England's Year One Phonics Screening Check used universally would provide a fundamentally important resource to guide everyone teaching foundational literacy as to their teaching effectiveness.
I know that this would be a wake-up call - a shock to many (reassuring to some) - but it would focus everyone's minds and actions on heeding the research and best practice findings.